Climate change, with its reaching implications, has become a popular topic in recent years. Among the many aspects of climate change, one of the most pressing concerns has been identified as the impact on the terrestrial water cycle, which has a direct impact on human settlement and ecosystems. The paper begins by reviewing previous studies, and then identifies their flaws and future research directions. The effects of climate change on surface water resources in the Dhidhessa Sub-basin, Abbay Basin, Ethiopia, were studied as practices. For future potential climate change, the results of global climate models (GCMs) and high-resolution regional climate models (RCMs) from multiple climate models were combined with data from Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from the CCAFS Data Distribution Center web page. To evaluate the impacts on water resources, various distributed hydrologic models based on local underlying surfaces were developed. The future potential climate change of the Dhidhessa Sub-basin Province was evaluated by integrating RCP outputs, whereas the climate change of the Dhidhessa River was directly derived from the results of different RCP. Dhidhessa stream flow will decrease in the future compared to the baseline era. The predictions of future discharge (stream flow) were based on climate scenarios data from 1991 to 2020 and for the future with two time windows, 2044 (2030–2059) and 2084 (2070–2099), on a monthly time-step after bias correction to both precipitation and temperature in the future climate described in the under each RCP. According to model results, the quantity of surface water resources in the Dhidhessa river region will decrease over the next 100 years, the percent decrease in mean annual stream flow by 10%, in 2044, and 6.3% in 2084, respectively, making the impact of temperature increase on runoff greater than that of precipitation. The distribution of runoff would be more even across years but more uneven across years in the long-term window, implying a higher possibility of drought and flooding. In general, this study discovered that any effect on this river that results in a decrease in flow will have a direct impact on the area’s ongoing water resource development and socioeconomic development.

The future water balance estimates are based on climatology and LULC reference period, as well as two future periods, 20302059 and 20702099, with monthly time-steps determined by bias modifications for both rainfall and temperature for every RCP. As depend on simulated results, the quantity of water stability element as in study area sub-basin would than decline in the coming centuries, with an annual mean river basin decrease of 10% throughout 2044 and 6.3% throughout 2084. Potential evaporation and evapotranspiration risen by 15.9 and 6.5, including both by percent, in the immediate term (2044), while rainfall, percolation of water, surface runoff, transmission losses, lateral runoff, groundwater flow, and water production declined by 5.6, 42.6, 44, 2.1, 30.8, 47.8, and 9.2, in all by percent. Long-term 2084 rainfall, percolation of water, surface runoff, transmission losses, lateral runoff, groundwater flow, and water production decreased by percent 1.6, 42.7, 43.1, 3.4, 29.1, 47.3,and 5.7 while evaporation increased by 11.6 and potential evapotranspiration increased by 22.4. Overall, the above research found that any impact on the watershed that causes a reduction through water balance has a major impact also on area continued efficient water management as well as improvement of living standards.