Climatic change and the planning of water systems

Storage reservoirs represent the core of most large water resource systems serving flood protection, low-flow augmentation and water supply, and hydro-power generation. Reliable estimation of reservoir effectiveness in controlling the streamflow is thus an important component in the planning and design of water resource system. This estimation is complicated by the uncertainty in streamflow during the working life of the reservoir, i.e. during a future 50-100 years. Further uncertainties arise in the case of a climate change. In this paper, results of a recent study on the impact of climate change on streamflow are analyzed from the point of view of their statistical significance vis-a-vis the uncertainties in estimates of reservoir effectiveness