A good understanding of the local and regional water cycle and how it is modified by landscape changes may help policymakers take the pertinent decisions in order to avoid adverse effects of future hydro–climatic changes. This knowledge is of particular interest in the most vulnerable areas of the world such as the African continent. In this context the aim of this project is to model hydrological responses to possible changes in climatic conditions in Lake Babati, northern Tanzania. For this reason a water balance model specially designed to simulate lake level changes was adapted to Lake Babati and calibrated with the available local meteorological and hydrological data record covering the last decades. The necessary ambient condition changes to produce a dry–out and an overflow of the lake were investigated and the response of the system to future IPCC climate change projections was studied. The results show that for instance a temperature change of less than 3ºC or a precipitation change of around 100 mm/year could eventually bring the lake from a dry–out situation to an overflow situation. Furthermore, the IPCC derived scenarios show a clear tendency of the lake to increase its volume and reach the overflow level in a relatively short time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-114009 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Girons Lopez, Marc |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för naturgeografi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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