Climatic and hydrological projections to changing climate under CORDEX-South Asia experiments over the Karakoram-Hindukush-Himalayan water towers

[Display omitted] •Snow and glaciered basins in HKH are the most vulnerable to changing climate.•CORDEX-SA RCM projections depict substantial seasonal changes in climate variables.•Shift in hydrological regime is expected under future scenarios.•Change in climate variables can alter snow and glacier coverage of the basins in HKH.•Precipitation- snow- and glacier-runoff is expected to alter significantly in future. The complex snow and glacier (cryosphere) dynamics over the “third pole” mountainous regions of the Karakoram-Hindukush-Himalayas (HKH) makes this region challenging for accurate hydrological predictions. The objective of this study is to investigate the impacts of climate change on major hydrological components (precipitation-runoff, snow- and glacier-runoff, evapotranspiration and inter-annual change in streamflows) over the Hunza-, Gilgit- and Astore-River basins, located in HKH. For this purpose, three different hydrological models (snowmelt runoff (SRM), HEC-HMS and HBV are tested over snow- and glacier-covered river basins. These are subsequently integrated with the climate projections simulated from regional climate models (RCMs) developed under CORDEX-SA experiments. The basin-wide RCM-simulations for future scenarios exhibited an increase in precipitation but decline in intensity of rise over high-altitude zones. The temperature rise showed a maximum increase during monsoon by 4.18 °C, 4.37 °C and 4.34 °C over Hunza-, Gilgit- and Astore-River basins, respectively, for the period 2071–2099 (2090s) and a high emission scenario (RCP8.5). Further, in response to rise in precipitation and temperature, the SRM simulations showed a significant increase in snow- glacier-melt runoff (49%, 42% and 46% for SRM) and precipitation runoff (23.8%, 15.7% and 27% for HEC-HMS) in the Hunza-, Gilgit- and Astore-River basins, respectively, for the 2090s under RCP8.5. The streamflow projections for SRM showed a shift in hydrological regime with an increase by 369 (168.4%), 216.5 (74.8%) and 131.8 m3/s (82%) during pre-monsoon in the Hunza-, Gilgit- and Astore-River basins, respectively and then decline by −73.2 m3/s (−13.9%) and −45.4 m3/s (23.4%) during monsoon of the 2090s, in the Hunza- and Astore-River basins, respectively, under RCP8.5. Overall, the projections show that the pre-monsoon and monsoon seasons are expected to be strongly influenced by climate change, through alterations in snow- and glacier-accumulation, and melt regimes with substantial co