Using climate information for river basin management in Sri Lanka (INVITED PRESENTATION)

We report on a demonstration project on applying climate information and prediction for river basin management in the Mahaweli basin in Sri Lanka. This project is a collaborative effort between the International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate Prediction, USA and the Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka. This river basin provides half of Sri Lanka's electricity requirements, rice, and tea production respectively. The following were key steps in the introduction of adaptation to climate variability and change: a) Characterization of climatology, climate variability and secular trends within the river basin, b) evaluation of the skill of global climate predictions and development of downscaled predictions, c) climate impacts studies d) Climate information needs survey and e) capacity building for climate services.

After five years, the collaborative approach has provided a demonstration of how the needs for climate information for basin management can be catered to in a typical tropical setting.