This tool visualizes the contribution of snow and glacier to the flow in the Upper Indus basin easily and intuitively. It also shows the impacts of climate change on those contributions in the Upper Indus basin and its sub-basins. The purpose of the interactive tool is to disseminate recent findings generated by ICIMOD with its partners and to communicate present conditions and future scenarios in hydrology based on current scientific understanding at the spatial scale of catchments and watersheds. The tool can also be used to compare the contribution of snow and glacier melt for different time periods and scenarios.

It presents results from HI-SPHY model for 2 (1 each for Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5) Global Circulation Model (GCM) run from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) datasets of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Future scenarios in contributions are presented for the mid-century (2041–2050) with respect to the reference period 1998–2007.

This dataset was developed as a part of Water Availability Analysis for the Upper Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong River Basins. On average, stream flow in the basin is dominated by glacier melt (~41%) and snow melt (~22%) with rainfall-runoff having minor importance (~27%). However, almost 100% of the flow in the Upper Indus river is due to snow and glacier melt. Total runoff in the basin is likely to change by -5% to +12% by mid-century.