HR: 08:00h
AN: GC51B-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Water Resource Changes In Future Climate Change Scenarios In The Puget Sound, Washington
AU: * Cuo, L
EM: cuol@u.washington.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Wilson Ceramic Laboratory Box 352700 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195-2700, Seattle, WA 98195, United States
AU: Salathe, E P
EM: salathe@atmos.washington.edu
AF: Climate Impact Group, University of Washington, Climate Impacts Group 4909 25th Ave NE Seattle, WA 98105, Seattle, WA 98105, United States
AU: Lettenmaier, D P
EM: dennisl@u.washington.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Wilson Ceramic Laboratory Box 352700 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195-2700, Seattle, WA 98195, United States
AU: Elsner, M M
EM: mmcguire@u.washington.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Wilson Ceramic Laboratory Box 352700 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195-2700, Seattle, WA 98195, United States
AU: Palmer, R N
EM: palmer@u.washington.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Wilson Ceramic Laboratory Box 352700 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195-2700, Seattle, WA 98195, United States
AU: Polebitski, A
EM: polebia@u.washington.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Wilson Ceramic Laboratory Box 352700 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195-2700, Seattle, WA 98195, United States
AB: The Puget Sound drainage basin is home to over three quarters of the population of the State of Washington. Like most of the western U.S., the Puget Sound basin has experienced about one degree C of warming over the last century, and projections are for much larger increases to occur over coming decades. Changes to date have resulted in documented shifts in the accumulation and ablation of snow in the basin's headwater streams, especially at intermediate elevation, and these changes have resulted in documented shifts toward earlier peak runoff during the spring melt season. Such changes have important effects on municipal and industrial water supplies in the region, as well as for environmental uses of the basin's rivers, including protection and enhancement of fisheries. We report on initial results of an ongoing study of the implications of IPCC AR4 climate scenarios to the hydrology and managed water resources of the basin, with particular emphasis on changes in runoff timing, including low flow magnitudes, and performance of the reservoir systems that provide water supply for the major municipalities in the basin. Our projections are based on statistical downscaling of IPCC AR4 scenarios from a suite of 21 IPCC AR4 GCMs for which 100-year transient simulations for emissions scenarios A2B1 and B2 have been archived. A regional hydrological model – the Distributed Hydrology-Soil- Vegetation model (DHSVM) is applied at 150 m spatial resolution, forced by subdaily downscaled GCM output at 1/16 degree grid nodes, which act as "pseudo stations" to force DHSVM. The DHSVM streamflow output at selected stream control points is used to force reservoir models of the major municipal water systems in the basin. In addition to changes in hydrologic attributes and reservoir system performance, which are evaluated for three time periods during the 2001-2100 period, we evaluate the range of predicted changes in total freshwater flux to Puget Sound, and compare predicted changes over the past century associated with observed climate and land cover change with projected climate change over the next century.
UR: http://hydro.washington.edu/~lancuo/
DE: 1637 Regional climate change
DE: 1836 Hydrological cycles and budgets (1218, 1655)
DE: 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218, 1631, 3322)
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting