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). A key design element of the CBCCSP from the outset of the project was to produce a well-organized and well-documented end-to-end (i.e., GCM to hydrologic products) data processing sequence and a web-accessible data archive that would greatly reduce the cost of producing updates in response to each subsequent CMIP/IPCC cycle. 3. To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below: Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content? 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). These include the full meteorological forcings for the model (variables 18), a suite of water balance variables simulated by the model (variables 916), and five different PET metrics (variables 1721) (Elsner et al., Citation2010). Rain dominant basins (DJF temperatures greater than 2C) show moderate increases in flood risk (primarily reflecting increasing storm intensity in the simulations), whereas snowmelt-dominant basins that currently flood in June show relatively little change in flood risk. We use cookies to improve your website experience. 2 Eleven sub-basins in the CRB used for large scale calibration (left panel). In this section we provide an overview of the methods associated with the primary elements of the CBCCSP. It is important to acknowledge that opinions differ on the utility or even possibility of improving ensembles of future projections based on the ability to simulate the past climate (e.g., Gleckler, Taylor, & Doutriaux, Citation2008). This has prompted the National Weather Service to issue a winter weather advisory for the Tri-Cities, Walla Walla, Hermiston, and surrounding areas in effect from 04:00 to 22:00 Sunday. Why is a 1C increase such a big deal? As a result the largest changes in snowpack are apparent in the simulations for relatively warm coastal mountain ranges, such as the Cascade Range, and at moderate elevation in the Rockies, where snowpack is most sensitive to changes in temperature of a few degrees Celsius. (2010). Lows in the upper 30s to lower 40s. Basin topographic map and smoothed basin boundary at 1/16 degree resolution. Friday Mostly sunny. Fig. 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. The six panels display results from the combination of three time periods (rows) and two emissions scenarios (columns) used in the HD downscaling process. The Columbia River is the fourth largest river in North America and the largest river in the Pacific Northwest. Corresponding shifts in the seasonal timing of streamflow are also relatively small in the Canadian CRB until late in the twenty-first century. 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). Fig. (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. Simulated widespread increases in soil moisture recharge in fall and winter in areas with significant snow accumulation in winter (for the current climate) support hypotheses of increased landslide risk and sediment transport in winter in the future. The macroscale hydrologic model used in the CBCCSP is the VIC model (Cherkauer & Lettenmaier, Citation2003; Liang, Lettenmaier, Wood, & Burges, Citation1994) implemented at 1/16 degree resolution. They found that the vast majority of locations across the Columbia River Basin are expected to experience increases in maximum streamflow magnitudes in the future. (For example, Dworshak and Milner are nested within the larger Ice Harbor sub-basin.). Lee. 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). 135 0 obj <>stream 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. Explore the basics of climate science arrow . The CBCCSP also provided a complete and well-tested data processing sequence for post-processing and summarizing the hydrologic data to provide figures and analysis efficiently. Either naturalized or modified flows (Crook, Citation1993) are used for bias correction of data provided in the site-specific products discussed below, with naturalized data taking precedence if available. Associated shifts in streamflow timing from spring and summer to winter are also evident in basins with significant snow accumulation in winter (for the current climate). The approach used a refined version of the methods established by Hamlet and Lettenmaier (Citation2005), which created a hybrid historical meteorological dataset based on three primary data resources: a) monthly HCN data in the United States and the similar AHCCD datasets in Canada, b) daily data from the cooperative station network in the United States (co-op stations) and similar data from Environment Canada, and c) a monthly climatology (19712000) for precipitation and daily minimum and maximum temperatures at 30 arc-second resolution produced using the PRISM (Daly, Gibson, Taylor, Johnson, & Pasteris, Citation2002; Daly, Neilson, & Phillips, Citation1994; DiLuzio, Johnson, Daly, Eischeid, & Arnold, Citation2008). The CIG (http://cses.washington.edu/cig/; see the Table of Acronyms in the Appendix) is an interdisciplinary research group at the UW focused on climate-related research in five major sectors: atmospheric sciences, hydrology and water resources, aquatic ecosystems, forests, and coasts. Based on, Learn more about the impacts of climate change, Learn how the climate is changing in your area, Learn how our region is responding, and how you can be part of the solution, BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. Figure 1. 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. The CBCCSP provided climate change projections of meteorological drivers and a calibrated VIC implementation in support of the study. are estimated by the VIC hydrologic model (discussed below) using empirical methods described by Kimball, Running and Nemani (Citation1997) and Thornton and Running (Citation1999). 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. Extreme event statistics are calculated directly from the raw (i.e., not bias-adjusted) daily streamflows at each streamflow site, applying methods developed by Hamlet and Lettenmaier (Citation2007) and Mantua et al. Citation2000) were selected as the basis for the study because they provide a) a wide range of plausible outcomes while also reflecting some potential GHG mitigation by the end of the twenty-first century, and b) most of the approximately 20 GCM projections associated with the CMIP3 archived runs from both emission scenarios (Mote & Salath, Citation2010). Pink bands show the range of nine or ten HD climate change scenarios for B1 and A1B emissions scenarios for three future time periods. The greater Mississippi River Basin (MRB) is the largest river basin in North America and the fourth largest basin in the world. Fig. About 15 sites in western Washington, outside the CRB, were also included in support of the 2009 WACCIA. Temperature and precipitation vary greatly with elevation, but in the central basin January average daily temperatures are between about 25 and 30 F (4 and 1 C), and July averages are mostly between 70 and 75 F (21 and 24 C). 11). 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). Schnorbus, M. A., Bennett, K. E., Werner, A. T., & Berland, A. J. Detailed forecast for Lower Columbia Basin of Washington Rest Of Today Partly sunny. Casola, J. H., Kay, J. E., Snover, A. K., Norheim, R. A., Binder, L. C. W., & the Climate Impacts Group. 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. Evidence includes increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level. 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. The HD method was also selected as the basis for the main summary products derived for each river location (see description below), primarily because it was capable of providing good performance over the complete range of products produced by the CBCCSP (Hamlet et al., 2010a). A number of regional partners provided recommendations for streamflow locations and other in-kind support including Jesse Abner (MDNR), Steve Running (University of Montana), Hal Anderson (IDWR) Levi Brekke, Pat McGrane and John Roache (USBR), Carolyn Fitzgerald (Seattle District USACE), Seshu Vaddey and Randy Wortman (Portland District USACE). Hydrologic climate change scenarios for the Pacific Northwest Columbia River basin and coastal drainages. The Columbia Basin Climate Change Scenarios Project (CBCCSP) was conceived as a comprehensive hydrologic database to support climate change planning, impacts assessment, and adaptation in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) by a diverse user community with varying technical capacity over a wide range of spatial scales. Model calibration and validation used a split sample approach in which calibration was performed for each of the 11 primary watersheds over a 15-year period (typically water years 19751989) and model validation was performed over a separate 15-year period (typically water years 19601974). (Citation2010).