Climate Change Risk Assessment of the Upper Arun Hydropower Project in Nepal
The International Hydropower Association (IHA, 2019) published Hydropower Sector Climate Resilience Guide that offers a methodology for identifying, assessing, and managing climate risks to enhance the resilience of hydropower projects. In this project, we used the guide to assess the climate risks (changes in mean, extremes, and effect on daily operation) to a proposed Upper Arun Hydroelectric Project in Nepal for the World Bank.
The Upper Arun Project design flood was based on the Probable Maximum Flood (PMF), which in turn is based on the Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP). Under climate change, the meteorological parameters (e.g., air temperature, wind speed, and saturation vapor pressure) changes, which could change the PMP estimates. I presented the study of PMP under climate change in the AGU Fall Meeting in 2020. This topic is still an area of active research.
References:
- Wasti, A., Schlef, K., Rahat, S., & Ray, P. (2020, December). Estimating the Probable Maximum Flood under Climate Change. In AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts (Vol. 2020, pp. H193-0004).