Malaysian Climate Change Projections and Potential Impact on Water Resources
There is already much evidence that natural climate variability and human-induced climate change in recent decades has had physical impacts on the hydrological cycle. This will affect all water-related sectors, including water supply, flooding, agriculture, health, industry, transport, energy supply, ecosystem, fisheries, and forestry which will give positive as well as negative impacts but overall negative effects are expected. Water stress and water excess too is expected to increase as a result of both climatic and non-climatic drivers as well as drivers by rapid population growth, increased urbanization, industrialization and pollution that threatened the sustainability of our water resources. The situation is never static, often changing in ways that are difficult to predict; however the impacts of human-induced climate change as well as non-climatic drivers can be modeled and projected by means of downscaling approach using the output from Global Circulation Model (GCMs). To accommodate and to obtain information of more relevance to water resources and water resources management at watershed scale, higher and fine-resolution (spatial and temporal) regional hydro-climate model is required. NAHRIM has completed the development of the regional hydrologic-atmospheric of Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak namely RegHCM-PM (2006) and RegHCM-SS (2010) respectively. The RegHCM-PM was developed and a downscale of GCM current and future climate data from CGCM1, and RegHCM-SS was downscaled from ECHAM5 and MRI-CGCM2.3.2 to grid scale 9km resolution. In addition, MMD has developed Regional Climate Model (RCM) for Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak using PRECIS with 50km grid resolution (2009). Further development using PRECIS with 25km grid resolution has been carried out by NAHRIM and UKM in 2010. The model output in terms of projected climatic parameters such as rainfall, temperature, evapotranspiration is very essential for the quantification of the potential climate change impacts on water resources and water resources management. The main point, however, is the extent to which all of these climatic and non-climatic drivers affect the country development plan, and how we can use this climate change projection with regards to water resources sustainability development. In general, this paper attempts (1) to inform the development of climate change modeling and projection in Malaysia, (2) to update the status of surface water availability in last four decades in Malaysia with connection to climate variability, and (3) to inform possible change (increase or decrease) of water resources (floods and droughts) due to climate change in Malaysia for the projected time horizon of 2010-2100.
Authors
Abstract
There is already much evidence that natural climate variability and human-induced climate change in recent decades has had physical impacts on the hydrological cycle. This will affect all water-related sectors, including water supply, flooding, agriculture, health, industry, transport, energy supply, ecosystem, fisheries, and forestry which will give positive as well as negative impacts but overall negative effects are expected. Water stress and water excess too is expected to increase as a result of both climatic and non-climatic drivers as well as drivers by rapid population growth, increased urbanization, industrialization and pollution that threatened the sustainability of our water resources. The situation is never static, often changing in ways that are difficult to predict; however the impacts of human-induced climate change as well as non-climatic drivers can be modeled and projected by means of downscaling approach using the output from Global Circulation Model (GCMs). To accommodate and to obtain information of more relevance to water resources and water resources management at watershed scale, higher and fine-resolution (spatial and temporal) regional hydro-climate model is required. NAHRIM has completed the development of the regional hydrologic-atmospheric of Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak namely RegHCM-PM (2006) and RegHCM-SS (2010) respectively. The RegHCM-PM was developed and a downscale of GCM current and future climate data from CGCM1, and RegHCM-SS was downscaled from ECHAM5 and MRI-CGCM2.3.2 to grid scale 9km resolution. In addition, MMD has developed Regional Climate Model (RCM) for Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak using PRECIS with 50km grid resolution (2009). Further development using PRECIS with 25km grid resolution has been carried out by NAHRIM and UKM in 2010. The model output in terms of projected climatic parameters such as rainfall, temperature, evapotranspiration is very essential for the quantification of the potential climate change impacts on water resources and water resources management. The main point, however, is the extent to which all of these climatic and non-climatic drivers affect the country development plan, and how we can use this climate change projection with regards to water resources sustainability development. In general, this paper attempts (1) to inform the development of climate change modeling and projection in Malaysia, (2) to update the status of surface water availability in last four decades in Malaysia with connection to climate variability, and (3) to inform possible change (increase or decrease) of water resources (floods and droughts) due to climate change in Malaysia for the projected time horizon of 2010-2100.
Citation
IR. HJ. AHMAD JAMALLUDDIN SHAABAN, IR. MOHD ZAKI MAT AMIN, TS. HJ. ZUBAIDI JOHAR, NURUL HUDA MD. ADNAN, GOH YEE CAI. 2011. Malaysian Climate Change Projections and Potential Impact on Water Resources. Digital NAHRIM Publication Repository.