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). Gusts up to 20 mph in the morning. Explore the basics of climate science arrow . These extended meteorological data have proved particularly useful in supporting ecological studies (e.g., Littell et al., Citation2010). 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. Fig. The data is accessible for decision makers, researchers, students, professionals and the public. Most of the fundamental details regarding the VIC implementation used in this study are covered by Elsner et al. In this case only modified flows (2000-level modified flows obtained from the BPA (Crook, Citation1993)) were used to train the bias-correction procedure, even if naturalized flows were also available. Basin topographic map and smoothed basin boundary at 1/16 degree resolution. (Citation2010). Instead, these areas respond primarily to projected changes in precipitation until late in the twenty-first century, and in fact some of these areas show modest increases in SWE (about +5%) until the middle of the twenty-first century under the combined effects of warming and increasing cool season precipitation. Colombia - Climate | Britannica 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. Other impacts, such as changes in soil moisture dynamics are also apparent in the simulations. To select an appropriate group of specific streamflow locations to include in the study to meet these diverse needs, the primary funding agencies for the study and several other key water management agencies in the region (MDNR, IDWR, USBR, and USACE) were asked to submit prioritized lists of streamflow locations. Columbia River Basin Impacts Assessment, PN Region - usbr.gov In 2008, many of the financial and institutional barriers to climate change assessment and adaptation that had been erected over the preceding eight years by the Bush Administration were substantially reduced by the incoming Obama Administration. 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). Because both these effects increase flood risk in the simulations, the effects are unusually large in these basins (Fig. Elsner et al. Multi-Objective Complex Evolution Procedure, developed at the University of Arizona (Yapo et al., A water resources simulation model developed by Labadie (, National Centers for Environmental Prediction, Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria. 8). Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below: If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. A primary motivation for the study was to support planning at geographic scales ranging from relatively small river basins (e.g., planning studies in individual sub-basins, such as the Yakima or Okanagan basins) to main-stem planning studies for the CRB as a whole (e.g., planning studies for the Columbia River hydro system). In other words, dry areas east of the Cascade Range have less base-flow potential to lose with increasing evapotranspiration and loss of summer precipitation because the soil moisture is already at very low levels in late summer. The largest increases in flooding are in mixed-rain-and-snow basins whose current mid-winter temperatures are within a few degrees of freezing. The state of Oregon, for example, is classified as about 75% mixed-rain-and-snow for the twentieth century climate. Gridded meteorological datasets (daily total precipitation and maximum and minimum daily temperature) at 1/16 degree latitude-longitude resolution (approximately 7km by 5km) were constructed for the study from observed station records for the period 1915 to 2006. 8) and warmer and drier summers (which increase PET) (Fig. Oregon Water Resources Department. NWPCC (Northwest Power and Conservation Council). However, our goal in this case was not to reduce the range of uncertainty by selecting a smaller group of GCMs. The largest changes in flood risk are simulated in mixed-rain-and-snow basins. 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. These techniques remove systematic biases in the simulations of routed streamflow to produce products that closely match the long-term statistics of a natural or modified flow dataset for a particular site. Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab. unpublished manuscript). By the end of the twenty-first century, essentially the entire state is classified as rain-dominant for the A1B scenario, and the B1 scenario is only slightly different (Fig. Three base flow parameters (Ds max, Ds, Ws) associated with the non-linear baseflow curve from the third soil layer (Liang et al., Citation1994) were used to calibrate the model. Although results could potentially vary in different areas of the model domain, these results support the hypothesis that only modest improvements in validation statistics would result from individual calibration of additional streamflow sites within each sub-basin. The results were only slightly better than those achieved in the large-scale calibration. Peak flows actually increase at many sites in Canada because of increasing fall, winter, and spring precipitation in this part of the domain, although the peak flow also occurs about a month earlier. 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. 7). Final calibration results for the model are shown in Fig. Retrieved from, CIG (Climate Impacts Group). Fig. Although these ongoing research and outreach efforts had already laid an extensive foundation in support of pilot climate services in the PNW, starting in 20062007 it was realized that a much more comprehensive and focused effort to provide hydrologic climate change scenarios was needed if stakeholders and water professionals in the region were to take the next steps in preparing for climate change. Fine-scale calibration of the model to compensate for such errors, although technically feasible, is of questionable utility, because it essentially ensures that the model is getting something closer to the right answer for the wrong reasons, which in turn has the potential to distort the sensitivity of the model to changing future conditions (Bennett, Werner, & Schnorbus, Citation2012). 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. (, Washington State Department of Community Trade and Economic Development, Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model, A Monte Carlo hydropower and water resources simulation model developed by the NWPCC, Hybrid Delta statistical downscaling method, HYDropower SIMulation, a hydropower and water resources simulation model used by the BPA in the CRB, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A comprehensive website was to be developed to serve all the data produced by the study, at no cost, to the general public, management professionals agency staff members, scientific researchers, private sector consultants, etc. The Assessment was initiated in June 2013 and is expected to completed in December 2015. The CBCCSP had a budget of about US$500 thousand (in 2010 dollars) over two years. The CBCCSP database has been a valuable resource which has dramatically reduced the cost of a number of high-visibility planning studies in the PNW, including the RMJOC water resources planning studies conducted by the BPA, USBR, and USACE, WSU integrated crop modelling and irrigation water demand studies under HB2860, the WA Integrated Climate Change Response Strategy, and west-wide extensions of the CBCCSP supported by the USFS and USFWS. The MRB encompasses 24 terrestrial ecosystems, providing habitat for 100 species of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians Its floodplain supports 40% of the waterfowl and wading birds in North America, and the MRB's . Retrieved from, Climate change and resource management in the Columbia River Basin. Tonight Mostly cloudy. 1 Map of the selected streamflow locations supported by the CBCCSP. Since 2014, the RDI has engaged in applied research related to community climate adaptation. 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. Naturalized flow products from specific sites were also used to provide naturalized inflows at model nodes needed to run the USBR MODSIM (Labadie, Citation2007) reservoir model for the Snake River basin. Registered in England & Wales No. Impacts of 21st-century climate change on hydrologic extremes in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. (Citation2010) interpolated existing 1/8 degree model parameters to 1/16 degree and also included previously calibrated soil parameters for the Yakima sub-basin (please see acknowledgements). As mentioned in the introduction, WA HB2860, which provided the bulk of the funding for the CBCCSP, also charged WDOE with identifying where US$200 million earmarked for water resources infrastructure improvements should be spent. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph. 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). Pink bands show the range of nine or ten HD climate change scenarios for B1 and A1B emissions scenarios for three future time periods. Source: NOAA Fisheries. The VIC model has been widely applied in climate change studies at both the regional scale (e.g., Christensen & Lettenmaier, Citation2007; Lettenmaier, Wood, Palmer, Wood, & Stakhiv, Citation1999; Maurer, Citation2007; Maurer & Duffy, Citation2005; Payne et al., Citation2004; Van Rheenen, Wood, Palmer, & Lettenmaier, Citation2004) and global scale (e.g., Adam, Hamlet, & Lettenmaier, Citation2009; Nijssen, O'Donnell, Hamlet, & Lettenmaier, Citation2001). After fitting three-parameter generalized extreme value probability distributions to the annual peak flow data, the daily 20-, 50-, and 100-year floods (under natural flow conditions) are estimated for both historical and future periods. 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. 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. . 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 six panels display results from the combination of three time periods (rows) and two emissions scenarios (columns) used in the HD downscaling process. Source: Bonneville Power Administration. Based on these substantial differences in hydrologic impacts it is difficult to escape the conclusion that management of water resources in the Canadian portions of the basin will play a crucial role in the ability of US water managers to adapt to more substantial changes in streamflow timing and summer low flows in the United States. These products are available for all 77 climate scenarios listed in Table 1, as well as for the historical simulation. %PDF-1.6 % Tague, Grant, Farrell, Choate and Jefferson (Citation2008) showed analogous differences between watersheds in the PNW based on the relative contribution of groundwater to base flows. Results from the study show profound changes in spring snowpack and fundamental shifts from snow to rain-dominant behaviour across most of the domain. But as researchers continue to fine tune climate models, shifting demand for water now must be accounted for, say Washington State University scientists. The Climate of the Columbia Plateau in Washington State This choice was imposed by WDOE. One of the fundamental difficulties with this task was that there was not, at the time, an available database of hydrologic projections that could support such planning, and regulatory agencies such as WDOE did not have the capacity or expertise to produce these resources themselves. 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. Thursday Sunny. These approaches are also useful for avoiding biases in the streamflow simulations that result from systematic errors in gridded precipitation or temperature data. (Citation2010) also updated the soil depth map using a more sophisticated approach developed for the DHSVM (Wigmosta, Nijssen, Storck, & Lettenmaier, Citation2002; Wigmosta, Vail, & Lettenmaier, Citation1994) that varies soil depth with elevation. The top two panels show the Nash Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) (left) and R 2 (right) for the calibration period, while the two lower panels show NSE (left) and R 2 (right) for the validation period. 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 approach was partly based on practical limitations on time and computational resources but was also informed by previous experience using the VIC model at finer spatial scales. 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. Preparing for climatic change: The water, salmon, and forests of the Pacific Northwest. Fig. This diagnosis is confirmed by the R 2 values for the same sites, which are generally higher and more consistent with neighbouring values over the entire domain. Many locations could see increases of 100% or more in the 50-year and 100-year flood magnitude, with some smaller tributaries potentially seeing increases of as much as 175%. A detailed climate change assessment report was prepared by the CIG for Seattle City Light (Snover et al., Citation2010) based primarily on the CBCCSP database. Fig. The dark red lines show the average of the climate change ensemble. Figure 8 shows hydrographs from selected basins with different hydrologic classifications (snowmelt-dominant, mixed-rain-and-snow, and rain-dominant) in the United States and Canada. Columbia Basin Water Hub - Living Lakes Canada Open File Report SW 02-002. (2005). Here, however, we show the same figures in metric units. All of the meteorological forcing data, except wind speed, are reproduced in the output files produced by the hydrologic model.