Downscaled and Bias-Adjusted Climate Projections for Afghanistan

Climate change is already having devastating impacts on human communities and natural landscapes, from increasing severity and frequency of natural disasters to drought and desertification that degrade both natural ecosystems and human livelihoods. However, the impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed across the world—some places are at far greater risk than others. These highly vulnerable places should be a higher priority for investments and interventions to help people and nature adapt to changing climatic conditions.

Afghanistan is one of the most at-risk countries from climate change. Within the country, the river basins are particularly sensitive as climate change will dramatically alter their water regimes upon which ecosystems and a vast proportion of the Afghan population and millions of people in neighbouring countries rely.

As part of an EU-funded project implemented by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), WCS conducted a vulnerability assessment for the Amu Darya River Basin that drains c. 14% of Afghanistan’s land area and is critically important for supporting both people and sensitive biodiversity (Elsen et al., 2023). Central to the vulnerability assessment was the development of downscaled and bias-adjusted climate projections, produced by the Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR)1. The climate projections were produced at a much higher resolution (1 km2) than were otherwise available and were tailored to the local environment.