Assessing climate change impacts on selected Indian river basins: a review of hydrological trends

Climate change plays a significant role in the River Basin Hydrology in India. This study is a systematic review of 52 peer-reviewed articles published from 2006 to 2026 and shows the synthesis of the impacts of climate change on temperature, precipitation, streamflow and water availability. The review compares the hydrological models and the climate scenarios used in the different studies reported earlier. The results indicate the Indian river basins warming consistently, with precipitation, streamflow and water availability having high spatial and temporal variability. SWAT was the most commonly used model and then came HEC-HMS, VIC, WEAP, MIKE SHE and HBV. The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and the projections from the latest generation of climate models (CMIP6) are increasingly being used in recent studies. Overall, climate change impacts are basin-specific, underlining the need for ongoing basin-scale assessments to ensure sustainable water resource management.