HR: 16:00h
AN: H24A-01 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Challenges on Managing California's Water Resources with Changing Climate
AU: * Chung, F I
EM: chung@water.ca.gov
AF: California Department of Water Resources, 1416 9th street, room 252-8, Sacramento, CA 95814, United States
AB: California's population is projected to grow to 60 million by year 2050 from the 38 million as of 2007 adding about 500,000 people each year. Meeting the water needs for agricultural production as well as for human and industrial consumption has been and will continue to be a tall challenge for water managers in the state. Winter snow pack in the high Sierra provides about a third of the water supply for the state. Rising temperature due to warming climate will bring more rain than snow; warmer temperature will speed up the melting process of snow pack. Less snow pack (smaller natural storage) and higher early spring runoff (prior to the irrigation season) will pose additional challenge to managing water in an already semi-arid region. Levees located in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta--the hub of the state's water delivery system—will become more susceptible to flooding because of the rising sea level and because of the changed tidal hydrodynamics in the estuary. Raised temperature in the water column will add further stress to the environmental and fishery resources in the Delta, upstream rivers and tributaries. In this study, historical hydrologic, climatologic, and meteorological records are first examined to detect and quantify the extent of the climate change that has already taken place. Future precipitation, temperature, and other meteorological variables projected by different GCM's, RCM's, and SRES- based emission scenarios are processed to examine the water system performance. Two large public water projects in California—the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project—are examined with the use of simulation models. CalSim is a systems simulation model developed to simulate the operations of the CVP and the SWP. DSM2 is a hydrodynamics and water quality model designed to simulate the stage, velocity, flow, electrical conductivity, and various water quality constituents in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Both CalSim and DSM2 were extensively used in this study to evaluate the system performance of the major water facilities in the state in light of the projected climate change.
UR: http://baydeltaoffice.water.ca.gov/modeling/
DE: 1857 Reservoirs (surface)
DE: 1873 Uncertainty assessment (3275)
DE: 1880 Water management (6334)
DE: 1884 Water supply
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting