NOAA Climate Change & Water Sector Webinar Series March 20, 2015

1. NOAA Climate Change & Water Sector Webinar Series March 20, 2015

2. Presentation Outline • CRWU History • Adaptation Strategies Guide • Extreme Events Workshop Planner • CREAT • Projections Map • Storm Surge Inundation and Hurricane Frequency Map • Pilots • Outreach • Q&A

3. Housekeeping • Please keep your lines on mute • Q&A breaks throughout presentation • Type your questions into the chat box • Ask over the phone at the end of the presentation

4. CRWU History National Drinking Water Advisory Council Climate Ready Water Utilities (CRWU) Report Final report provides EPA with recommendations on developing a CRWU initiative to support water sector climate resiliency. Developing an Adaptive Response Framework Fundamental guide to build out the concept of a climate ready water utility, integrates with other tools.

5. Mission Statement To provide the water sector (drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater utilities) with the practical tools, training, and technical assistance needed to adapt to climate change by promoting a clear understanding of climate science and adaptation options.

6. Climate Ready Tools & Resources Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool Extreme Events Workshop Planner Climate Ready Process Adaptation Strategies Guide Toolbox Adaptive Response Framework Learn Climate and Adaptation Basics Explore Elements of Climate Readiness Assess Risks and Evaluate Opportunities Research and Gather Information Collaborate with Partners

7. Adaptation Strategies Guide Promoting a Clear Understanding of Adaptation Options 7

8. Overview • Guide for utilities to consider climate change in utility planning • Navigate guide like a website • Goals: • Present easy-to-understand climate science, translating data into impacts for utilities • List adaptation strategies related to impacts • Assist in the adaptation planning process • Updates • Water conservation practices • Climate data • Energy Management • Green Infrastructure

9. ASG Overview

10. Climate Region Briefs

11. Challenge Briefs • Translating climate data into utility-relevant challenges • Adaptation options relevant to this challenge

12. Adaptation Options • Options provided in three categories • Planning • Operational • Capital/ Infrastructure • Relative cost ($-$$$) • No Regrets • Utility Examples

13. Sustainability Briefs • Information on green infrastructure, energy management, and water demand management • benefits • how to get started • relevant adaptation options • examples • links to further resources

14. Preparing for Extreme Weather Events: Workshop Planner for the Water Sector Developing long term plans to increase resiliency 14

15. Extreme Weather Events Workshop Planner • Walks users through all of the steps of planning, conducting, and evaluating a workshop • Goal is to determine actions that a utility or community can take today to become more resilient to more frequent and intense extreme events • Open lines of communication between utilities and other local partners to assess potential impacts and adaptation to extreme events

16. Workshop Planner Scenarios • Five scenarios are included: • Flooding • Drought • Sea-level rise • Wildfire • Reduced snowpack • Available on CRWU website http://www.epa.gov/climatereadyutilities

17. Pilot Workshops • Bisbee, AZ • Drought, wildfire, flooding • Worked with other agencies and emergency sectors to develop emergency management plans • Developed outreach at schools and town halls • New Orleans; Erie, PA; Ft. Pierre, SD; Fresno, CA • Updating tool with Rural Community Assistance Program

18. Scenario-based Projected Changes Map • Provides easy “point and click” access to the 3 CREAT climate scenarios for any location within the U.S.

19. Scenario-based Projected Changes Map

20. Storm Surge Inundation & Hurricane Frequency Map

21. Houston, TX Hurricane Stats

22. Houston, TXFEMA Flood Maps

23. Houston, TX SLOSH

24. Climate Resilience Evaluation & Awareness Tool (CREAT)

25. About CREAT • Software tool for conducting risk assessment of potential climate change impacts at your utility • Multiple climate scenarios provided to help capture uncertainty • Assessments will help inform adaptation planning • Results from CREAT help utilities compare potential costs, risk reduction and energy implications of different options

26. Process

27. What Can You Do In CREAT? • Explore local climate data • View links to publications, models and other tools Build Awareness • Catalog data and assumptions • Understand and assess climate impacts Assess Risk • Compare adaptation options • Generate reports to support decisions Plan Adaptation

28. CREAT Process

29. Historical Data • 30-year (1971-2000) annual and monthly averages of temperature and precipitation • Data provided at ½ degree by ½ degree resolution (32x32 mi.) • Intense precipitation data sourced from NOAA climate stations • Select the station that best matches your historical data OR enter your own Location ( ) with available climate stations ( ) in CREAT

30. Projected Climate Change • CREAT provides projected changes in • Temperature • Precipitation • Intense precipitation • Sea level • Rather than rely on a single projection, three scenarios are provided to support assessments over a range of possible future conditions

31. What Information and Data are Available? • Models as basis for climate projections • Down-scaling efforts to extend to local scales • Challenge: connect changing climate to more direct consequences to water resources 2020-2029 2090-2099 CREAT plot of climate model projections Source: IPCC AR4 Projected Temperature Changes for SRES A1B

32. Climate Scenarios Selected scenarios • Scenarios, based on a single model projection, selected for each grid cell • Hot and Dry model • Central model • Warm and wet model • Data provided for two time periods (2020-2050 and 2045-2075) Increasing Precipitation Increasing Temperature Multiple scenarios ( )within the distribution of climate model projections ( ) for a given location.

33. Climate Data in CREAT View data from multiple climate stations, scenarios, and time periods Annual and monthly temperature and precipitation Intense precipitation events and sea- level rise

34. Asset-Threat Pairs • Consider those assets vulnerable to identified threats • Pairs are the basis for all risk assessments • Risk assessed for each scenario and time period when a threat is applicable

35. Baseline Analysis • Baseline shows current resilience • Opportunity to consider and document benefit of what you already do • Represents the risk of taking no action

36. Assess Consequences • You can assess the qualitative level of consequences for each category • Tool combines these decisions into an overall level for asset-threat pair

37. Assessment Results • Each assessment results in a specific combination of likelihood and consequences • Results placed into bins of the risk matrix

38. Resilience Analysis • Resilience Analysis results represent the benefits from adaptation • As in Baseline, assessments conducted for asset-threat pairs and time periods • Similar process encourages you to consider options for reducing risk

39. Select and Modify Measures • Continue to build a list of adaptation options by identifying those that could be implemented to provide additional protection • Explore ability to modify or improve existing measures, not just new practices or infrastructure

40. Adjust Consequences • Implementing adaptive measures should reduce consequences levels with respect to Baseline • Difference in overall consequence level is translated into RRUs which are used to calculate the benefits of adaptive measures

41. Building Packages • Adaptation packages are possible plans for adapting to climate change • Each measure contributes costs and RRUs as a measure of benefit • Packages also defined in terms of energy implications of adaptive measures

42. Quantitative Results Results provided as • Risk matrices: assessment results by likelihood and consequence • Risk profiles: results counted by overall consequence • Indices based on RRUs and distribution of results in matrices

43. CREAT 3.0 • Updated climate data • Monetized risk values for comparison of risk • Streamlined analysis option for new users and small system users • Web-based / More user-friendly • Includes a library of energy management, green infrastructure and water demand management resources for planning purposes

44. CRWU Projects Train-the-Trainer Workshops: Storm Surge Extreme Events & Adaptation Planning Workshops CREAT Pilots

45. Thank you! Contact the Team Get Updates! Join our mailing list: crwu_contacts@lists.epa.gov Visit us on the web: www.epa.gov/climatereadyutilities • Curt Baranowski • Baranowski.curt@epa.gov • Mike Maier • Maier.michael@epa.gov • Laura Dubin • Dubin.laura@epa.gov • Jordan Page • Page.jordan@epa.gov