A remote sensing approach, The NorWeST Summer Stream Temperature Model and Scenarios for the Western U.S.: A Crowd-Sourced Database and New Geospatial Tools Foster a User Community and Predict Broad Climate Warming of Rivers and Streams, The coastal streamflow flux in the Regional Arctic System Model, Tidal-Fluvial and Estuarine Processes in the Lower Columbia River: II. Monday: A chance of snow before 4 p.m., then a slight chance of rain and snow. How do I view content? The HD method was also selected as the basis for the main summary products derived for each river location (see description below), primarily because it was capable of providing good performance over the complete range of products produced by the CBCCSP (Hamlet et al., 2010a). Adjusted and Homogenized Canadian Climate Data, British Columbia Ministry of Environment (Canada), Bias Correction and Spatial Disaggregation, Columbia Basin Climate Change Scenarios Project, Composite Delta statistical downscaling method, Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington, Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (Two)Supported the IPCC TAR, Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (Three)Supported the IPCC AR4, Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (Five)Supports the IPCC AR5, A water resources simulation model for the CRB developed by Hamlet and Lettenmaier (, A crop system simulation model developed by Stckle et al. A 20 percent chance of rain in the afternoon. Les principaux produits de ltude comprennent des donnes sommaires pour environ 300 sites fluviaux dans la rgion pacifique nordouest et des produits mensuels de Systme d'information gographique pour 21 variables hydrologiques couvrant tout le domaine ltude. Similarly, three different downscaling approaches were used in the study, each with its own advantages and limitations in the context of different natural resources management applications (Hamlet et al., 2010a). Southwest wind 5 to 15 mph with gusts to around 25 mph. Application Process How to Apply Sign-up for Program Updates Post-processing of the primary VIC model output (see Table 2) was carried out to produce a number of specific products discussed in the following sections. The changes in the importance of snow in some areas of the United States are particularly striking. 8). Special thanks also to Dennis P. Lettenmaier, head of the Land Surface Hydrology Group at the UW, for providing access to computer resources and system administration support for the CBCCSP. Figures and summary tables for long-term average monthly precipitation, monthly average temperature, evapotranspiration, PET4 (Table 2), PET5 (Table 2), total column soil moisture, SWE, combined flow (runoff+baseflow). Results from the study show profound changes in spring snowpack and fundamental shifts from snow to rain-dominant behaviour across most of the domain. Impacts of Near-Term Climate Change on Irrigation Demands and Crop Yields in the Columbia River Basin, Impacts of climate change on the state of Indiana: ensemble future projections based on statistical downscaling. Explore the basics of climate sciencearrow_forward, Explore detailed climate projectionsarrow_forward, Learn more about the impacts of climate changearrow_forward, Learn how the climate is changing in your areaarrow_forward, Learn how our region is responding, and how you can be part of the solutionarrow_forward, The extent of glaciers in 1984, 2000, and 2021. People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. We used 50 parameter sets to define the initial optimization parameter space, of which the 25 best parameter sets advance in each evolution of the optimization. 7 Left panel: Simulated historical 1 April snow water equivalent (SWE) (upper right) and percentage changes in 1 April SWE for two emissions scenarios and three future time periods extracted from the CD VIC scenarios. . Snowmelt-dominant basins in the United States, which are somewhat warmer and do not experience as much precipitation change in the scenarios, show increases in winter flow, earlier and reduced peak flow in spring, followed by an earlier streamflow recession and lower flows in late summer (e.g., Columbia River at The Dalles in Fig. A knowledge-based approach to the statistical mapping of climate, A statistical-topographic model for mapping climatological precipitation over mountainous terrain, Constructing retrospective gridded daily precipitation and temperature datasets for the conterminous United States, Implications of 21st century climate change for the hydrology of Washington State, Interdecadal modulation of ENSO teleconnections, The role of transboundary agreements in the Columbia River basin: An integrated assessment in the context of historic development, climate, and evolving water policy, Assessing water resources adaptive capacity to climate change impacts in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Preparing for climatic change: The water, salmon, and forests of the Pacific Northwest. Climate change scenarios for water planning studies, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, CropSyst, a cropping systems simulation model, Deep groundwater mediates streamflow response to climate warming in the Oregon Cascades, An overview of CMIP5 and the experiment design, An improved algorithm for estimating incident daily solar radiation from measurements of temperature, humidity, and precipitation. In addition to creating these datasets, the RMJOC agencies worked together to adopt a set of methods for incorporating these data into those longer-term planning activities. A number of high-visibility studies have made use of the CBCCSP database to date, a few of which are summarized below. Fig. 3. Figure 1 shows a map of the approximately 300 streamflow locations that were ultimately compiled from these lists for inclusion in the study (a spreadsheet listing these sites is available on the CBCCSP website (CIG, Citation2013a)). Regional summaries were prepared by Tohver et al. Retrieved from, CIG (Climate Impacts Group). The methods are discussed in more detail in these references, but a brief description of the procedure is given here to help orient the reader. Additional details on the approach and methods are available in the CBCCSP study report (Hamlet, Carrasco, et al., Citation2010a). endstream endobj startxref The largest increases in flooding are in mixed-rain-and-snow basins whose mid-winter temperatures are presently within a few degrees of freezing. The PRISM data for Canada were interpolated to 30 arc-second resolution data from a 2.5 arc-minute (approximately 4km) product and were statistically adjusted to remove the bias associated with the different time period (19611990 means for the 4km product). 7). The NSE scores for about 20 sites are marginal (between 0.3 and 0.7). To learn about our use of cookies and how you can manage your cookie settings, please see our Cookie Policy. Register a free Taylor & Francis Online account today to boost your research and gain these benefits: An Overview of the Columbia Basin Climate Change Scenarios Project: Approach, Methods, and Summary of Key Results, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences , University of Notre Dame , Notre Dame , Indiana , USA, Technical Service Center 86-68210, US Bureau of Reclamation , Denver , Colorado , USA, Climate Impacts Group , University of Washington , Seattle , Washington , USA, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, and Climate Impacts Group , University of Washington , Seattle , Washington , USA, Adaptation to Future Water Shortages in the United States Caused by Population Growth and Climate Change, Climate Change Impacts on Fisheries and Aquaculture of the United States, Climate Change and Future Wildfire in the Western United States: An Ecological Approach to Nonstationarity, Crossscale interactions dictate regional lake carbon flux and productivity response to future climate, Drought Conditions Maximize the Impact of High-Frequency Flow Variations on Thermal Regimes and Biogeochemical Function in the Hyporheic Zone, Fine-scale environmental DNA sampling reveals climate-mediated interactions between native and invasive trout species, Future Climate Change Impacts on Streamflows of Two Main West Africa River Basins: Senegal and Gambia, Geomorphological principles for phased sediment management, How Do Modeling Decisions Affect the Spread Among Hydrologic Climate Change Projections? For example, to support academic or agency researchers with their own hydrologic modelling capability, the study provides projections of meteorological drivers such as temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, and humidity and a calibrated VIC hydrologic model implementation. 7). Report of A.G. Crook Company to Bonneville Power Administration, Portland, OR. Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? 5 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG. Primary support for the project was provided by WDOE, with additional major support provided by the BPA, NWPCC, BCME, OWRD, and CTED via the 2009 WACCIA (http://cses.washington.edu/cig/res/ia/waccia.shtml) (Miles et al., Citation2010). Produced by, Clean Energy and Green Building Major Projects, Private and public sector clean energy and green building construction projects valued at $15M or more for the 3rd quarter of each year. Highs in the lower to mid 60s. 2013. 135 0 obj <>stream (2011). These include the full meteorological forcings for the model (variables 18), a suite of water balance variables simulated by the model (variables 916), and five different PET metrics (variables 1721) (Elsner et al., Citation2010). Key products from the study include summary data for about 300 river locations in the PNW and monthly Geographic Information System products for 21 hydrologic variables over the entire study domain. The presence of glaciers in Canada (not included in the CBCCSP simulations) may further exacerbate the discrepancies between impacts to summer flows in the United States and Canada in late summer (Werner et al., Citation2013). Tonight Mostly cloudy. Water Level Models, Floodplain Wetland Inundation, and System Zones, Using expressed behaviour of coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) to evaluate the vulnerability of upriver migrants under future hydrological regimes: Management implications and conservation planning. This extreme scenario, however, was only run by a few GCMs, which ultimately limits the ability to show consistent ranges of outcomes for each emissions scenario. If neither naturalized nor modified flow is available, no bias-adjusted data were provided. In relatively small basins (approximately 5001500km2), of which there are a substantial number included in the study, errors in meteorological driving data are often a strong determinant of simulation errors. Simulated widespread increases in soil moisture recharge in fall and winter in areas with significant snow accumulation in winter (for the current climate) support hypotheses of increased landslide risk and sediment transport in winter in the future. 10 Left panel: Changes in Q100 for 297 streamflow locations expressed as a ratio of Q100 for the future period to Q100 for the historical period based on the average of the nine or ten HD scenarios for the B1 and A1B emissions scenarios for three future time periods. Full knowledge of the preceding steps is not required to use the products obtained at any level of the study, which increases the utility of the products. 2012. Yorgey, G. G., Rajagopalan, K., Chinnayakanahalli, K., Brady, M., Barber, M. E., Nelson, R., Stockle, C. S., Kruger, C. E., Dinesh, S., Malek, K., Yoder, J., & Adam, J. C. (2011). Using these resources, other modelling groups can carry out their own investigations of hydrologic impacts using either their own hydrologic model (just using the driving data) or the VIC implementation from the CBCCSP. In other words, although at these sites the model results do not match the observations in the absolute sense (large bias), the relative changes follow the observed variations quite well (high R 2). This choice was imposed by WDOE. Source: NOAA Fisheries. Dark red lines show the average of the climate change ensemble. Evidence includes increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level. These data are summarized in figures and tables prepared for each streamflow site discussed in Section 4. Gusts up to 20 mph in the morning. It was also well understood by practitioners at CIG that aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem researchers, managers, and stakeholders needed a similar, but more comprehensive, data resource to support long-term planning and the development of climate change adaptation strategies at the landscape scale. Those who lack their own hydrologic model, but wish to make additional runs themselves, can obtain the calibrated VIC model implementation. Bias corrected inflows were produced to support the GENESYS and HYDSIM reservoir operations models, which are used by the NWPCC and BPA, respectively, for main-stem studies in the CRB (e.g., NWPCC, Citation2005). The city's average temperature is 57 F (14 C). The approach and methods are more fully described in the study report (Hamlet, Carrasco, et al., Citation2010a, Chapter 3) and also by Elsner et al. By late 21st century, annual precipitation increases by 5% (8%), with an 8% (14%) winter increase and a 4% (10%) summer decrease, but because . The Water Hub contains numerical and spatial data, reports, photos and other types of information about streams, lakes, wetlands, groundwater, snow, glaciers and climate in the Columbia Basin both historical and current. West-wide studies to support USFS and USFWS needs (including current efforts to include California) will have a budget of less than half this amount, a level of efficiency that would not have been achievable without the CBCCSP pilot effort. At the other extreme, for those without any hydrologic modelling or post-processing capability the study provides a wide range of hydrologic products that can be used without any expertise in the preceding steps. Saturday: Mostly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of rain. The calibrated CBCCSP VIC model was modified by WSU by integrating it with a sophisticated crop model (CropSyst; Stckle, Donatelli, & Nelson, Citation2003) that, among other functions, estimates crop water demand. The most sensitive basins are mixed-rain-and-snow basins. The CBCCSP provided climate change projections of meteorological drivers and a calibrated VIC implementation in support of the study. The macroscale hydrologic model used in the CBCCSP is the VIC model (Cherkauer & Lettenmaier, Citation2003; Liang, Lettenmaier, Wood, & Burges, Citation1994) implemented at 1/16 degree resolution. Inset numbers at the upper left in the future projections are the percentage changes in 1 April SWE averaged over each grid cell in the entire domain. Impacts assessments from the WACCIA played a central role in these planning activities, but updated and extended data from the CBCCSP also materially supported these efforts. 2860, 59th Legislature (WA 2006). Lows in the upper 40s to lower 50s. Associated shifts in streamflow timing from spring and summer to winter are also evident in basins that currently have significant snow accumulation in winter, whereas rain-dominant basins show minimal shifts in streamflow timing. Nakienovi, N., Alcamo, J., Davis, G., De Vries, B., Fenhann, J., Gaffin, S.,Dadi, Z. This daily disaggregation technique sometimes introduces an undesirable discontinuity in the bias-corrected daily values at the beginning and end of months. A family of greenhouse gas emissions scenarios used in the IPCC effort (Nakienovi et al. Isaak DJ et al. The site at Corra Linn Dam on the Kootenay River is representative of changing hydrographs in many locations in the northern tip of the CRB in British Columbia. As mentioned above, 20062007 was something of a turning point for regional stakeholders considering future actions to prepare for climate change. Gridded datasets provide full spatial coverage (i.e., all grid cells in the model domain) at monthly time scales, of the key hydroclimatic variables listed in Table 2. Determining surface water availability in Oregon. Bias-corrected streamflow values are useful in water planning studies, especially for providing inputs to reservoir operations models that are calibrated on a particular naturalized or modified flow dataset (e.g., Hamlet, Lee, et al., Citation2010b; NWPCC, Citation2005; Vano et al., Citation2010). Using the VIC model, the study has projected impacts for the Great Busin and the Columbia River, Missouri River, and Colorado River basins, and assessment of impacts in California is underway at the time of writing. Snover, A. K., Hamlet, A. F., Lee, S.-Y., Mantua, N. J., Salath, E. P. Jr, Steed, R., & Tohver, I. 9. This is likely because soil moisture is higher in summer west of the Cascade Range and evapotranspiration is mostly energy limited, whereas east of the mountains the late summer soil moisture is already very low in the current climate and increasing evapotranspiration does not result in much additional soil moisture stress. A 20 percent chance of rain showers in the evening. It reaches a thickness estimated at 16,000 feet in places. 1990 level modified streamflow 19281989. Subsetted from the, Averaged periodic drought condition ranking by basin for 2015-2020 from the, Mapped extent of wildfires from 1950-2020 from, Air quality monitoring stations within the study area. Changes in snowpack are a key driver of hydrologic impacts in the PNW (Elsner et al., Citation2010; Hamlet & Lettenmaier, Citation1999b). Elsner MM, et al. The six panels display results from the combination of three time periods (rows) and two emissions scenarios (columns) used in the HD downscaling process. completed or are ongoing in the Columbia River Basin. These products are available for all 77 climate scenarios listed in Table 1, as well as for the historical simulation. These results support the hypothesis that widespread increases in winter landslide risks and sediment transport in rivers are likely to accompany increased winter precipitation and loss of interannual snowpack in mountain watersheds. Text files (six per figure) providing all the ensemble data used to construct each panel in the figure are also provided on the CBCCSP website. This is a good example of the use of the study data to support relatively fine-scale planning needs. Right panel: Historical estimates of summer AET (upper right) compared with percentage changes for the same CD scenarios. Mitigating the effects of climate change on the water resources of the Columbia River basin, Downscaling simulations of future global climate with application to hydrologic modeling, Review of scenario selection and downscaling methods for the assessment of climate change impacts on hydrology in the United States Pacific Northwest. The Climate Resilience Program helps communities in the Basin become more climate resilient by supporting large-scale, multi-year, shovel-ready climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience projects that address sources of climate change or manage the risks of climate change impacts. We use cookies to improve your website experience. A primary focus of the Assessment is to generate future climate change flow at more than 300 locations across the Columbia River Basin (Basin) and evaluated the potential impact of those flows at specific sub-basins within the Basin. Each of these methods has its specific advantages and limitations (as discussed in detail in Hamlet et al., 2010a); however, the HD method combines several important strengths of the CD and BCSD methods and was developed specifically to support the prediction of daily hydrologic extremes (Hamlet et al., 2010a). The Columbia River is the fourth largest river in North America. NWPCC (Northwest Power and Conservation Council). But as researchers continue to fine tune climate models, shifting demand for water now must be accounted for, say Washington State University scientists. Here we will review a few important aspects of the basic implementation to help orient the reader and will then focus most of our attention on the additional implementation and calibration tasks carried out during the CBCCSP. Detailed forecast for Upper Columbia Basin Tonight Mostly clear. Mostly cloudy, with a high . Daily streamflow data from the CD and HD downscaling methods are first processed to extract the peak daily flow in each water year of the simulations (91 years). Differences in the impacts in the US and Canadian portions of the basin are striking, confirming results reported in two previous studies (Hamlet, Citation2003; Hamlet & Lettenmaier, Citation1999b). The Assessment was initiated in June 2013 and is expected to completed in December 2015. Highs in the lower to mid 40s. Crook, A. G. (1993). To produce the bias-adjusted flows, a bias correction procedure using quantile mapping techniques is applied (Elsner et al., Citation2010; Snover et al., Citation2003; Vano et al., Citation2010). By that same year, a large number of natural resources management agencies in the US federal system (e.g., the USFS, USNPS, USBR, USFWS, FERC, FEMA, NMFS) were actively engaged in educating and training their upper-level leadership and staff about climate change and were attempting to acquire appropriate data and information to support long-term planning and develop long-term climate change adaptation strategies. The Hot and the Cold of It Summer comes on strong. Elsner et al. The sweeping statements in the 2007 IPCC AR4 (Solomon et al., Citation2007) regarding the scientific consensus on observed warming (unequivocal) and the direct human role in the alteration of the climate system (90% confidence) made it clear to many management professionals that the waiting game for climate change planning was nearing an end. In 2006, The Act relating to Water Resource Management in the Columbia River Basin [hereinafter HB2860] (2006) directed the WDOE to study water resources systems in Washington and identify specific projects in which to invest up to US$200 million provided by the bill to improve water resources infrastructure or management systems. In relatively wet and cool areas along the coast and at high elevation in the northern parts of the basin, summer AET is energy limited; therefore, rising temperatures result in increases in AET. Lows in the lower 50s. They found that the vast majority of locations across the Columbia River Basin are expected to experience increases in maximum streamflow magnitudes in the future. The largest reductions in low flows occur west of the Cascade Range in the simulations. Even with substantial cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, scientists expect our climate to continue changing over the coming decades. Thus, each site is bias-corrected using either naturalized or modified flow but not both. Three statistical downscaling approaches were selected or developed for the study: Composite Delta (CD): regional average projections compiled from 10 GCMs (Elsner et al., Citation2010), Bias Correction and Spatial Downscaling (BCSD): (Salath, Citation2005; Salath, Mote, & Wiley, Citation2007; Wood, Leung, Sridhar, & Lettenmaier, Citation2004; Wood, Maurer, Kumar, & Lettenmaier, Citation2002), Hybrid Delta (HD): (Hamlet et al., 2010a). A calibrated 1/16 degree latitude-longitude resolution implementation of the VIC hydrologic model over the Columbia River basin was used to produce historical simulations and 77 future hydrologic projections associated with three different statistical downscaling methods and three future time periods (2020s, 2040s, and 2080s). (2010). The CIG (http://cses.washington.edu/cig/; see the Table of Acronyms in the Appendix) is an interdisciplinary research group at the UW focused on climate-related research in five major sectors: atmospheric sciences, hydrology and water resources, aquatic ecosystems, forests, and coasts. In addition, some observed streamflow data are suitable for use as natural data if the effects of storage and diversions are relatively small (e.g., for the USGS Hydro-Climatic Data Network streamflow sites). Source: Bonneville Power Administration. Bias adjustment was also used in preparing the specific reservoir modelling support products discussed below. Friday Mostly sunny. Lee. Broad changes in shallow groundwater (e.g., localized contributions to streamflow from smaller unconfined aquifers), however, are likely well captured by the VIC model based on a strong correlation between VIC-simulated base flows and observations in many basins examined by Wenger et al.