EVALUATION OF WATER AVAILABILITY FUTURE SCENARIOS IN THE HYDROGRAPHIC BASIN OF SÃO LOURENÇO WATER SUPPLY SYSTEM USING HIGH RESOLUTION CLIMATE MODELS FROM CMIP6
Global climate changes and extreme climate variability directly impact the hydrological cycle and the evaluation of climate conditions is important to subsidize the water resources management in watersheds. This study aims to present a water availability diagnosis of historical conditions and future scenarios based on climate changes in the Alto Juquiá watershed, in which the São Lourenço System is located, one of the water supply systems used in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (RMSP). For hydroclimatic characterization of the study area, monthly data on precipitation (1970-2019), flow (2000-2022) and potential evapotranspiration (1979-2022) for Alto Juquiá watershed were collected. As a result, a positive trend was verified in recent periods (2000-2022) with an increase of precipitation and flow in the study area. Precipitation, flow and potential evapotranspiration data from this same period were used to structure the SMAP hydrological model in the monthly version, using the period 2000-2009 for calibration and 2010-2019 for model validation. It was possible to observe good results for the values of NASH, CCMR and R² objective functions in both calibration (NASH = 0.82; CCMR=0.83; R²=0.83) and validation (NASH = 0.75; CCMR=0.83; R²=0.80) modelling processes, showing that the structured model is suitable as a subsidy for the development of the next stages of this study. To evaluate climate projections, the study will define future scenarios of water availability in the region, based on high resolution climate models, for future periods until the year 2100, to provide climate information for the watershed management and infer about water security for water supply in the RMSP.