ABSTRACT: The Philippines, like many of the world's poor countries, will be among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because of its limited resources. As shown by previous studies, occurrences of extreme climatic events like droughts and floods have serious negative implications for major water reservoirs in the country. A preliminary and limited assessment of the country's water resources was undertaken through the application of general circulation model (GCM) results and climate change scenarios that incorporate incremental changes in temperature and rainfall and the use of a hydrological model to simulate the future runoff-rainfall relationship. Results showed that changes in rainfall and temperature in the future will be critical to future inflow in the Angat reservoir and Lake Lanao, with rainfall variability having a greater impact than temperature variability. In the Angat reservoir, runoff is likely to decrease in the future and be insufficient to meet future demands for water. Lake Lanao is also expected to have a decrease in runoff in the future. With the expected vulnerability of the country's water resources to global warming, possible measures to cope with future problems facing the country's water resources are identified.

KEY WORDS: Water resources · GCMs · CCCM · UKMO · GFDL · WatBal · Angat reservoir · Lake Lanao

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Published in CR Vol. 12, No. 2-3 (1999) on August 27
ISSN: 0936-577X. Copyright © Inter-Research, Oldendorf/Luhe, 1999