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Water resources

Future Nile river flows

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 319–320 (2017)Cite this article

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Climate change is projected to increase annual Nile river flow; importantly, year-to-year variability is also expected to increase markedly. More variable flows could present a challenge for consistent water resource provision in this region.

Nile river flows have shown notable variability throughout recorded history. Now analysis of climate models suggests that in the future interannual variability is likely to increase, with important consequences for the reliability of associated water resources1. This comes at a critical time, when the major Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is nearing completion and Ethiopia is recovering from a serious drought associated with the 2015 El Niño event. Rivers draining the Ethiopian Highlands (the Eastern Nile Basin), particularly the Blue Nile, are the dominant source of downstream main Nile flows, complemented by Lake Victoria outflows and some runoff from the White Nile system. The rapidly growing populations of arid and semi-arid downstream countries Egypt and Sudan are highly reliant on the Nile for their freshwater.

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Figure 1: Percent annual rainfall anomaly for 2015 with respect to the period 1981–2016 (data from ref. 10).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Declan Conway is at the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK,

    Declan Conway

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  1. Declan Conway
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Correspondence to Declan Conway.

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Conway, D. Future Nile river flows. Nature Clim Change 7, 319–320 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3285

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