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These extensive and ongoing research activities have also been materially supported by the long-term outreach and education programs of CIG, which have, from the outset, fully recognized the transboundary nature of the CRB (Hamlet, Citation2003; Miles et al., Citation2000) and responded by promoting sustained, long-term interaction with CRB researchers and stakeholders in the United States and Canada (Hamlet, Citation2011). 2013b. .. slide 2 of 5. The DOI via the USFWS has recently established a set of LCCs across the United States (USFWS, Citation2013) and has generated additional funding to support a group of regional CSCs, one of which was recently established in the PNW (PNWCSC), combining the efforts of about 15 PNW research universities, jointly led by the USGS, Oregon State University, the UW, and the University of Idaho. (Citation2010) over the entire PNW (Tohver et al. 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. 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. For each streamflow location (and its associated contributing basin area), a set of identical products is available on the study web site (CIG, Citation2013b). (Citation2010). 2012. hL4+ze Figure 1. 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. (1 April SWE and SWE2PR values were calculated using the CD VIC scenarios.). Blue dots represent the historical values; the red dots show the range of values from the HD ensemble (10 or 9 values); black dashes show the mean of the HD ensemble, and the orange dots show the single value calculated for the CD projections. In particular, it is clear that Canada will have not only about 50% of the reservoir storage in the CRB (Hamlet, Citation2003) but also an increasingly dominant portion of the natural water storage as snowpack in the future. By closing this message, you are consenting to our use of cookies. Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page Additional products such as bias-adjusted inflow sequences for specific reservoir operations models are also included. The bias-corrected monthly values are then used to rescale the simulated daily flow sequences produced by the hydrologic model to produce bias-corrected daily streamflows. 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 information about the study can be found under Documentation, while model results can be found under Data. Sites without modified or natural flow estimates are shown in yellow. The basalt mostly came from fissures in the ground, perhaps sourced from a hot spot that is now beneath the Yellowstone Caldera. Figure 4 shows a flow chart of these post-processing steps. Blue lines show average historical values (19162006) (repeated in each panel). Friday Mostly sunny. 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. Impacts of 21st-century climate change on hydrologic extremes in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The study is intended to support research, vulnerability assessment, long-term planning, and climate change adaptation by the natural resources management community at a range of spatial scales, by users with varying levels of technical expertise. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph. 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. Les plus fortes augmentations dans les crues sont dans les bassins de pluie et neige mles dont les tempratures actuelles au milieu de l'hiver sont quelques degrs du point de conglation. Fig. These data are summarized in figures and tables prepared for each streamflow site discussed in Section 4. (2000). Special thanks to Kurt Unger and Ken Slattery, who were the primary architects of the CBCCSP at WDOE. The changes in the importance of snow in some areas of the United States are particularly striking. 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). Reductions in spring snowpack and summer streamflow, for example, are relatively modest in the Canadian portions of the basin because of cold winter temperatures that delay warming-related impacts to seasonal snowpack (Elsner et al., Citation2010). Yakima River Basin Study A 20 percent chance of rain in the afternoon. 5. The CBCCSP was designed from the outset to support users with a very wide range of technical sophistication and capacity. Lows in the upper 40s to lower 50s. 95 0 obj <> endobj Statistics for hydrologic extreme events (as discussed above) are presented in a different format, shown in Fig. 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. 12 Changes in monthly mean total column soil moisture (OctoberSeptember) for three representative river sites in the PNW: Kootenay River at Corra Linn Dam (left), Columbia River at The Dalles, Oregon (centre), and Yakima River at Parker (right). For more information, please visit our Permissions help page. How do I view content? Changes in snowpack are a key driver of hydrologic impacts in the PNW (Elsner et al., Citation2010; Hamlet & Lettenmaier, Citation1999b). An overview of the Columbia Basin Climate Change Scenarios Project: Approach, methods, and summary of key results. These areas are so cold in winter (DJF average on the order of -10C temperature) that a change in temperatures of 23C has relatively little effect on seasonal snow accumulation in the 2020s and 2040s. 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. . 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. 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. Thursday Night Partly cloudy. 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. Prior climate change datasets for the CRB produced by CIG (using CMIP2/TAR projections) only included about 20 river sites (e.g., NWPCC, Citation2005; Snover et al., Citation2003) and provided very limited support for planning efforts at smaller spatial scales. These annual peak daily flows are then ranked and assigned a quantile value using an unbiased quantile estimator based on the method of Cunane (Stedinger, Vogel, & Foufoula-Georgiou, Citation1993). The CBCCSP, in particular, provided access to additional scenarios and downscaling methods that provided a range of hydrologic outcomes associated with uncertainty in the climate projections, which the WACCIA assessments largely did not. 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 . However, our goal in this case was not to reduce the range of uncertainty by selecting a smaller group of GCMs. endstream endobj startxref Thus, each site is bias-corrected using either naturalized or modified flow but not both. These approaches are also useful for avoiding biases in the streamflow simulations that result from systematic errors in gridded precipitation or temperature data. For climate change studies in the western United States where snow is an important element of the hydrologic cycle, the model's use of a sophisticated energy-balance snow model, which incorporates important effects on snow accumulation and melt associated with vegetation canopy (Andreadis, Storck, & Lettenmaier, Citation2009) has been a notable advantage. 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). The NSE scores for about 20 sites are marginal (between 0.3 and 0.7). 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). July temperatures hover in the 90s, with several afternoons during the summer pushing the thermometer reading as high as 100 to 105 degrees. Nous avons implment une rsolution latitudelongitude calibre 1/16 de degr dans le modle capacit d'infiltration variable (VIC) et avons appliqu dans le modle bassin du fleuve Columbia pour produire des simulations historiques et 77 projections hydrologiques futures correspondant trois mthodes de rduction dchelle statistique et trois priodes futures (les dcennies 2020, 2040 et 2080). Snover, A. K., Hamlet, A. F., Lee, S.-Y., Mantua, N. J., Salath, E. P. Jr, Steed, R., & Tohver, I. 8). Final calibration results for the model are shown in Fig. Dave Rodenhuis, Markus Schnorbus, Arelia Werner, and Katrina Bennett at PCIC at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, also provided in-kind support and funding for collaborative research which contributed materially to this project. Fig. 1 Map of the selected streamflow locations supported by the CBCCSP. Salem, Oregon. The CBCCSP (and extensions over the west) has greatly reduced the costs of these types of studies by supplying (at essentially no cost) a wide range of high-quality hydrologic scenarios as a foundation for further work. The Columbia River basin will see an increase in flooding over the next 50 years as a result of climate change, new modeling from Oregon State University indicates. Although this project consists of an abbreviated set of scenarios and products using three scenarios (high, medium, and low impact) for one downscaling method, the CBCCSP played an important role in providing an established set of methods for developing historical driving datasets and implementing and running the hydrologic models. Preparing for climatic change: The water, salmon, and forests of the Pacific Northwest. What Matters Most: Are Future Stream Temperatures More Sensitive to Changing Air Temperatures, Discharge, or Riparian Vegetation? 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. Act relating to water resource management in the Columbia river basin, H.R. endstream endobj 96 0 obj <. IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (Nakienovi et al. Changes in the 1 April snowpack have been shown to depend strongly on winter temperature regimes (Hamlet, Mote, Clark, & Lettenmaier, Citation2005; Mote, Citation2006; Mote et al., Citation2005). Has spring snowpack declined in the Washington Cascades? 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). 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. Since its inception in 1995, CIG has been extensively involved in climate-related research focused on the CRB and its water resources management systems. This was coordinated through the River Management Joint Operating Committee (RMJOC), a sub-committee of the Joint Operating Committee which was established through direct funding Memorandum of Agreements between BPA, Reclamation, and the USACE. During the study (and afterwards), some stakeholders expressed interest in including less optimistic emissions scenarios (such as SRES A1FI), in order to better understand the implications of a potential worst case scenario. Observations around the world demonstrate that the global atmosphere has been warming rapidly since the 1970s, with temperatures up an average of 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit in that time and expected to increase between 1 and 4 degrees by the 2030s, Pytlak said. Explore this website to learn more about the changes were expecting, and what we can do about them. To minimize this data processing artifact, boundaries between months were smoothed while keeping the sum of daily streamflows equal to the original monthly values in the final product. As an integrated priority, the Trust has integrated climate resilience into its strategic priorities by supporting: wildfire risk reduction and job creation through the Columbia Basin Wildfire Resiliency Initiative energy retrofits, repairs and alternative energy generation at community-purpose buildings through the Non-profit Sustainability - Building Support Grants 2013a. 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). Blue lines show the average historical values (19162006) (repeated in each panel). Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine. 8). This web site provides streamflow information for the Columbia River and coastal drainages in Washington and Oregon State for the 21st century based on a large number of climate scenarios and model experiments. RSUM[Traduit par la rdaction] Le projet de scnarios de changement climatique du bassin du Columbia (CBCCSP) a t conu comme une base de donnes hydrologiques complte pour appuyer les activits de planification, dvaluation des rpercussions et d'adaptation dans la rgion pacifique nordouest menes par une communaut d'utilisateurs diversifie disposant de capacits techniques varies dans une large gamme dchelles spatiales. In the first five years (19952000) of operation, the research efforts of CIG were primarily directed towards the assessment of the impacts of interannual and interdecadal climate variability associated with ENSO (Battisti & Sarachik, Citation1995; Trenberth, Citation1997) and the PDO (Gershunov & Barnett, Citation1998; Mantua, Hare, Zhang, Wallace, & Francis, Citation1997). How essential is hydrologic model calibration to seasonal streamflow forecasting? Littell, J. S., Elsner, M. M., Mauger, G. S., Lutz, E. R., Hamlet, A. F., & Salath, E. P. (2011). 3 Summary map of 80 streamflow locations (out of a total of 297) for which error statistics between simulated and naturalized flows were computed. Lee. 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 PET increases over most of the PNW in summer as a result of rising temperatures; however, AET is reduced in all but a few areas of the domain because AET is water limited and summer precipitation decreases in the simulations. 3099067 Starting from these parameter sets, an additional large-scale calibration was performed during the CBCCSP to improve model performance in reproducing historical streamflow. The Hot and the Cold of It Summer comes on strong.