Projection of spatiotemporal changes in precipitation of Afghanistan for defferent shared socioeconomic pathways scenarios

Abstract

The spatially inhomogeneous changes in precipitation due to global warming emphasizes the need for assessment of precipitation changes at regional scales. Such assessment is particularly important for Afghanistan where a majority of the population is engaged in agriculture and thus, assessment of the impacts of climate change on precipitation characteristics is paramount for sustainable development of the country. With the release of new global climate model (GCM) simulations for recently conceptualized shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP) scenarios, it is become important to evaluate the changes the precipitation for new scenarios for streamlining the existing policies derived based on earlier scenarios. In this study, six GCMs for Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects Phase 6 (CMIP6) are used for projection of spatiotemporal changes in precipitation of Afghanistan for five SSP scenarios, ssp119, ssp125, ssp245, ssp370 and ssp585. The climate change factor was estimated to assess the changes in precipitation for two future periods, near (2020-2059) and far (2060-2099) future at a spatial resolution of 1.0°. The results revealed a large heterogeneity in changes in annual and seasonal precipitation of Afghanistan. Large variability in precipitation projections using different GCMs was also noticed. The multi-model ensemble (MME) mean projection of precipitation revealed increase in annual precipitation in the northeast and decrease in the southwest, which indicates wet region will be wetter while the dry region will be drier. However, the precipitation was projected to increase almost the entire country for higher temperature rise scenarios. Overall, winter temperature was projected to decrease more, up to -30% in the southwest while an increase in summer precipitation in the southwest. Changes in annual precipitation were projected to decrease with time. The highest decrease was projected by nearly -20% for ssp585 in the far future and the highest increase in the northwest nearly by 20%, also in the far future.