Water Harvesting, Climate Change, and Variability

Abstract

In general, water resources are becoming more vulnerable under the influence of climate change, especially for the agricultural dominant countries in the world as they are more fragile to the climate variability. Water harvesting possibilities are evaluated based on the historical observations and downscaled future projection of rainfall from the GCM outputs. This chapter illustrates the water harvesting possibilities under the influence of climate change and variability to assess the challenges imposed by climate change. In this regard, a case study is undertaken to evaluate the climate change impact on the precipitation under different climate scenarios and assess the future surplus precipitation with respect to the historical period. Therefore, a brief discussion regarding different traditional water harvesting structures are presented, based on the eco-regions over India. Prior to the case study, a general background of water harvesting techniques is briefly discussed in an Indian context. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. All rights reserved.