INGENIEUR
Climate Change Projection
in Cameron Highlands
using the Regional Climate
Model
By Tan Kok Weng and Loh Phui Nying
Faculty of Engineering and Green Technology
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman
Massive flooding in the Cameron Highlands
in October 2013 raised the concern of local
people to water planning and management.
The Cameron Highlands was selected as
the study area to conduct a climate change
projection (1980–2069). The Regional
Climate Model was used to project Cameron
Highlands’ temperature and precipitation. Bias
correction of the simulated data was done to
remove common projection model errors. After
correction, the maximum, minimum and mean
temperatures are estimated to rise by 3.8°, 1.8°
and 2.8 °C in 100 years’ time. The corrected
annual pr ecipitation indicates a rise in rainfall
amount of 2.32mm per year (23.2 mm per 10
years or 231.8mm per 100 years).
C
ameron Highlands has been selected as
the study area to conduct a climate change
projection. Situated in the northwest of
Pahang Sate in Peninsular Malaysia (Figure 1),
Cameron Highlands (4°28’N 101°23’E) has
a total area of 710 km 2 (Fortuin, 2006). The
average elevation is approximately 1,180m and
the highest peak is Mount Brinchang at 2,032m
(Tenaga National Berhad Research, 2009).
Thus, the temperature of Cameron Highlands is
significantly lower than Malaysia’s lowlands due to
its high altitude.
The Meteorological Station Cameron Highlands
(MMD) recorded a temperature range between
15°C and 25.4°C with an average temperature of
6
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Brinchang, Cameron Highlands
19.4°C in 2014. The highest number of days in a
month with rain was 23 days The mean monthly
rainfall was 95.8mm with the maximum of
365.1mm and minimum of 8.9mm (MMD, 2009).
High intensity rain can result in flash flooding.
On October 22 and 23, 2013, unusual intense
downpours brought a huge volume of water to the
Ringlet Reservoir, along with solid waste, debris
and silt which caused a rapid increase of the water
level within a short period of time (The Malay Mail
Online, 2013b). Such accumulation of silt and
sediments caused the reservoir’s holding capacity
to drop drastically. As a result, excess water had
to be discharged in stages from the Sultan Abu
Bakar Dam. This action resulted in around 80
houses being engulfed by strong currents (The
Malay Mail Online, 2013a). This incident resulted
in a few deaths and much destruction of property.