Climate Change Scenarios for Pacific Northwest Water Planning Studies: Motivation, Methodologies, and a User’s Guide to Applications
Center for Science in the Earth System
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Washington
Alan F. Hamlet ([email protected]), Amy Snover, and Dennis P. Lettenmaier
Overview
This document describes the motivation for this project, the design goals for the streamflow scenarios, and the technical methods that have been used to produce the scenarios based on linked climate and hydrologic model simulations. Some notes on the use of the scenarios for water planning and some strategies for coping with climate uncertainty in the planning process are also included.
Motivation for the Project
During an upper level policy workshop on climate change (Skamania, 2001) a number of specific action items for facilitating appropriate water planning to cope with potential changes in climate were proposed.
Two of these were:
- target existing water planning groups and planning studies at the river basin scale,
- and provide freely available climate change streamflow scenarios to help reduce the costs of including climate change information in planning.
This project was designed to respond to these recommendations.
vic-climate-change-technical_documentation