Adaptive Reservoir Operation Rules Under Climatic Change

Increases in greenhouse gases caused by human activities have raised global temperature. Global warming affects water resources systems and the hydrologic cycle and may impact the performance of water resource systems. Water resources managers face challenges balancing conflicting goals in reservoir operation given the uncertainties introduced by climatic change. The HadCM3 climate model is used in this paper to estimate temperature and precipitation for early (2025–2039), middle (2055–2069) and late (2085–2099) periods of the 21st century under the A2 greenhouse gases emission scenario. The estimated temperature and precipitation from the climate model are input to a calibrated hydrologic model (IHACRES) to simulate inflow in a river basin draining to the Karoon-4 reservoir in Iran. A meta-heuristic multi-objective optimization algorithm (NSGA-II) is used in conjunction to predicted hydrologic variables to optimize dynamic operation rules in the Karoon-4 reservoir. The Karoon4 reservoir is operated non-adaptively and adaptively under climatic change. Our results show that adaptive reservoir management increases the reliability and reduces the vulnerability associated with hydropower generation in early, middle, and late simulation periods of the 21st century. These findings establish the importance of factoring in climatic change and considering adaptive strategies in future reservoir operations.