Beck and Bernauer (2011) modelled the combined changes in water demand and climate in 13 sub-basins of the Zambezi basin and the impact on mean water availability. They conclude that future climate change is of less concern, whereas population and economic growth as well as expansion of irrigated areas are likely to have important transboundary impacts due to significant decrease in water availability. They calibrated Y-27632 datasheet their hydrological model on long-term mean monthly discharge data, but do not present an evaluation of their discharge simulations with observed data. Thus, the existing

studies suggest that a reduction in future discharge is likely, but it is not clear how well the applied hydrological models perform for the simulation of Zambezi discharge, which raises questions about the modelling of discharge conditions under future climate change scenarios. Further, results of previous studies are difficult to compare due to different assumptions, models, time-periods and locations of interest. Therefore, the World Bank concluded in a recent study in the Zambezi basin that “additional detailed analysis is needed for assessing the impact of climate change” (World Bank, 2010, vol. PI3K inhibitor 2, p. 83). The objective of this study was to establish a well-calibrated hydrological model for the Zambezi basin, such that the model can be used with confidence

for an assessment of the impacts of water resources development and climate change on Zambezi discharge. An important aspect of our study was a thorough evaluation of the historic simulations, to ensure that the model is capable of realistically representing the main input–output relationships of the system. For future water resources development in the Zambezi basin we used scenarios of a highly detailed, recently published study (World

Bank, 2010). On the other hand, there is a lack of detailed climate modelling for the African continent, where only data of coarse resolution general circulation models – with limited accuracy on the sub-basin scale – were readily available. For illustrative purposes we based our study on downscaled data of two well-known climate models, with contrasting projections about future precipitation. isothipendyl The paper is structured as follows: After an introduction to the study area the data basis is presented. In the methods section we describe the river basin model, the calibration method and the scenario definitions. The results section includes an evaluation of simulation under historic conditions as well as results for simulation of future scenarios. This is followed by a discussion of results and possible sources of uncertainties. The paper ends with an outlook and conclusions. This study focuses on the Zambezi basin (Fig. 1), which is the fourth largest river basin in Africa (after Congo, Nile and Niger) and covers 1.4 Mio km2. As in other studies (e.g. Winsemius et al., 2006, Yamba et al.