1 / 13

Preparing Water Managers for Drought and Climate Change in the Southwest

This briefing discusses the implications of climate change on water supply in the Southwest and provides strategies for water managers to adapt.

branden
Download Presentation

Preparing Water Managers for Drought and Climate Change in the Southwest

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. USGS Congressional Briefing Washington, DC April 27, 2007 Preparing Water Managers for Drought and Climate Change in the Southwest Katharine Jacobs Executive Director Arizona Water Institute

  2. Arizona Water Institute A consortium of Arizona’s universitiesfocused on improving quality of life in Arizona and throughout the world through water research, education and technology… 400 water related faculty/staff 3 state agencies Public and private partners

  3. Data from Woodhouse et al., 2006 Water Resources Research Water-supply planning based on anomalous period Sustained droughts in 1100s and 1500s Virgin runoff (million acre-ft) Data from Meko et al., accepted, Geophysical Res. Tree rings give long-term perspective on water supply and drought Reconstructed Colorado River Flows

  4. Implications of Climate Change • The past is not an analog for the future; even long term and severe droughts of the past are not likely to frame future drought extremes • Lack of stationarity: implications for water management at multiple scales Stott et al. (2000)

  5. Connecting Science and Water Management • Climate change impacts on flows in the Colorado are significant; majority of models project 10-40% reductions in runoff • Temperature affects both supply and demand • Current inflows to Powell at 50% of normal; below normal 7 of last 8 years • Shortage sharing and reoperation rules now being developed

  6. Increasing demand, decreasing supply Arizona Population 1900-2100 • Population growth, changing values and over-allocation mean that future “normal” droughts will have greater impacts and lead to more conflict • Potential for multi-decadal drought emerging as a concern Global Institute of Sustainability, ASU

  7. Climate change impacts on Arizona • Serious implications for water supply and habitat • Central Arizona Project has the lowest priority on the river • The Colorado River supplies almost half of Arizona’s water Multiple-stress context; increasing demands from other basin states National Drought Mitigation Center

  8. Adaptation requires better information • Need to improve monitoring and data collection to identify and respond to regional and local trends, and allow for better early warning systems • Focus on critical or vulnerable systems • Need better data access and retrieval Salt River Project Monitoring Station

  9. Adaptation options • Drought planning and conservation are no-regrets strategies • Conjunctive management offers multiple benefits However, water either comes from the environment or from a current use (impacts) • Effects on groundwater of drought and climate change need more analysis Lower Santa Cruz Replenishment Project

  10. Adaptation: Revise engineering assumptions • Re-evaluate engineering assumptions re: potential for more extreme events and longer-term droughts • Extremes could be of a different nature • Variability may be outside of the range of our experience • Abrupt changes may result in limited time to respond • Connect energy and water Central Arizona Project • Technological solutions: • desalination, • weather modification, • expansion of surface storage • integration of delivery systems

  11. Adaptation: Increased use of forecasting tools • Improve understanding of climate drivers and variability at multiple time scales • Produce better predictive information (based on probabilistic forecasts) Courtesy of Konstantine Georgakakos Improve linkages between large-scale climate models (GCMs) and local conditions through regional hydrologic models.

  12. Adaptation: Decision Support • Impacts are occurring today -- we need to begin adaptation efforts. • Decision support systems need to focus on specific decisions at regional and local scales. • Explain the climate drivers, allowing managers to evaluate the utility and basis of the information. • Encourage adaptive management and institutional flexibility. • Significant new resources are required for adaptation in the near term.

  13. Conclusions • The question for water managers is no longer whether climate change is happening. • The question is what are we going to do about it?

More Related