Bias Correction of Hydrologic Projections Strongly Impacts Inferred Climate Vulnerabilities in Institutionally Complex Water Systems

Malek, Keyvan; Reed, Patrick M.; Zeff, Harrison B.; Hamilton, Andrew; Wrzesien, Melissa L.; Holtzman, Nataniel M.; Herman, Jonathan D.; Pavelsky, T.

doi:10.1061/(asce)wr.1943-5452.0001493

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 73 publications

(92 reference statements)

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“…For instance, the effects of climate model error and natural climate variability, which were combined in the experiment presented here, could be separated using single‐model initial condition large ensembles (Lehner et al., 2020). Similarly, hydrologic model uncertainty can significantly affect water resource impact assessments (Malek et al., 2022) and could be accounted for by using multiple model structures and behavioral parameter sets. Importantly, hydrologic model uncertainty could interact with systems model error to further increase the influence of systems model error on the overall variance of key variables of interest.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainty Decomposition to Understand the Influence of Water Systems Model Error in Climate Vulnerability Assessments

Herman

Kucharski

Abellera

et al. 2023

Water Resources Research

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Climate vulnerability assessments have become a common feature of water resources systems planning studies (Arnell, 2011;Plummer et al., 2012; US Bureau of Reclamation, 2012;Weaver et al., 2013). These assessments generally require ensemble simulations of future climate scenarios that are passed through a combination of hydrologic models and water resources systems models to measure the vulnerability of the water system to properties of future climate. Once these vulnerabilities are identified, additional simulation or optimization experiments are used to determine how well different adaptation actions mitigate these vulnerabilities (

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainty Decomposition to Understand the Influence of Water Systems Model Error in Climate Vulnerability Assessments

Herman

Kucharski

Abellera

et al. 2023

Water Resources Research

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“…The Bruyère et al (2014) method has been applied successfully in other studies to bias adjust GCMs (e.g., Wang and Kotamarthi 2015;Pontoppidan et al, 2018;Wrzesien and Pavelsky, 2020). It must be noted that, due to biases arising from parameterized processes in any chosen RCM, further bias adjustment of the RCM output is still often needed prior to its use in downstream impact modeling (Malek et al, 2022).…”

Section: Bias Adjustment Of Gcm Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking the impacts of precipitation phase changes through the hydrologic cycle in snowy regions: From precipitation to reservoir storage

et al. 2022

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Cool season precipitation plays a critical role in regional water resource management in the western United States. Throughout the twenty-first century, regional precipitation will be impacted by rising temperatures and changing circulation patterns. Changes to precipitation magnitude remain challenging to project; however, precipitation phase is largely dependent on temperature, and temperature predictions from global climate models are generally in agreement. To understand the implications of this dependence, we investigate projected patterns in changing precipitation phase for mountain areas of the western United States over the twenty-first century and how shifts from snow to rain may impact runoff. We downscale two bias-corrected global climate models for historical and end-century decades with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model to estimate precipitation phase and spatial patterns at high spatial resolution (9 km). For future decades, we use the RCP 8.5 scenario, which may be considered a very high baseline emissions scenario to quantify snow season differences over major mountain chains in the western U.S. Under this scenario, the average annual snowfall fraction over the Sierra Nevada decreases by >45% by the end of the century. In contrast, for the colder Rocky Mountains, the snowfall fraction decreases by 29%. Streamflow peaks in basins draining the Sierra Nevada are projected to arrive nearly a month earlier by the end of the century. By coupling WRF with a water resources model, we estimate that California reservoirs will shift towards earlier maximum storage by 1-2 months, suggesting that water management strategies will need to adapt to changes in streamflow magnitude and timing.

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“…Exacerbating these complexities, atmospheric rivers deliver a large fraction of the state's annual precipitation during a few short events (Dettinger et al., 2011; Gershunov et al., 2017), introducing strong interdependencies between floods and droughts. This makes it critical to resolve daily scale dynamics (Hanak, Jezdimirovic, et al., 2018; Kocis & Dahlke, 2017; Malek et al., 2022; Zeff et al., 2021), while simultaneously multi‐decadal simulations are needed to properly evaluate the impacts of long‐term infrastructure investments, the slow dynamics of groundwater storage change (Manna et al., 2019), and the deep uncertainties in climatic, economic, and regulatory changes. Lastly, it is critical that planning models resolve a wide range of spatial scales and system actors in order to evaluate how water moves through statewide infrastructure networks in response to local actions by individual water utilities, irrigation districts, and water storage districts (hereafter referred to collectively as “water districts”; Zeff et al., 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilient California Water Portfolios Require Infrastructure Investment Partnerships That Are Viable for All Partners

et al. 2022

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Water scarcity is a growing problem around the world, and regions such as California are working to develop diversified, interconnected, flexible, and resilient water supply portfolios. To meet these goals, water utilities, irrigation districts, and other organizations will need to cooperate across scales to finance, build, and operate shared water supply infrastructure. However, planning studies to date have generally focused on partnership‐level outcomes (i.e., highly aggregated cost‐benefit analyses), while ignoring the heterogeneity of benefits, costs, and risks across the individual partners. This study contributes an exploratory modeling analysis that tests thousands of alternative infrastructure partnerships in the Central Valley of California, using a daily scale simulation model (CALFEWS) to evaluate the effects of new infrastructure on individual water providers. The viability of conveyance and groundwater banking investments are as strongly shaped by partnership design choices (i.e., which water providers are participating, and how is the project's debt distributed?) as by extreme hydrologic conditions (i.e., floods and droughts). Importantly, most of the analyzed partnerships yield highly unequal distributions of water supply and financial risks across the partners, so that only 8% of the partnerships explored are capable of providing water to each partner for under $200/ML. Partnership viability is especially rare in the absence of groundwater banking facilities (1%), or under dry hydrologic conditions (1%), even under explicitly optimistic assumptions regarding climate change. Given these results, we outline several major policy implications for institutionally complex regions such as California, which are currently investing heavily in cooperative approaches to resilient water portfolio design.

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Bias Correction of Hydrologic Projections Strongly Impacts Inferred Climate Vulnerabilities in Institutionally Complex Water Systems

Cited by 10 publications

References 73 publications

Uncertainty Decomposition to Understand the Influence of Water Systems Model Error in Climate Vulnerability Assessments

Uncertainty Decomposition to Understand the Influence of Water Systems Model Error in Climate Vulnerability Assessments

Tracking the impacts of precipitation phase changes through the hydrologic cycle in snowy regions: From precipitation to reservoir storage

Resilient California Water Portfolios Require Infrastructure Investment Partnerships That Are Viable for All Partners

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