Investigating the effects of climate change on future hydrological drought in mountainous basins using SWAT model based on CMIP5 model

Since climate change is a major challenge that affects the environment, especially the hydrological flow, this research has used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to study the climate change effects on the runoff in Alvand mountain basin in Iran. The SWAT model calibration was done based on the SUFI-2 algorithm and the validation results for a 20-year prediction period (2020–2040) showed that the model had high accuracy in simulating the runoffs. CMIP5 models were used to predict the basin’s temperature and rainfall (the best scenario was Miroc5) and the results showed that the basin’s future climate conditions increase in temperature and decrease in rainfall were appropriate. According to Miroc5 (RCP8.5), the annual runoff in the mentioned period would decrease by 8.36% compared to the past. In a seasonal scale, the largest runoff reduction would be 75% in summer (under the Miroc5 (RCP4.5)), and in a monthly scale, it would be 79% in April increasing dramatically to reach 335% in September (under Miroc5 (RCP8.5)). The trend of the future runoff was investigated using the Mann–Kendall model and the Gresson estimation method. Results showed that there would be no significant trend in the mentioned period and the trend of the future drought intensity would be increasing under all studied scenarios.