Regional Experimental Forecasts

1
Needs of water resources decision-makers for
decadal climate predictions Andrea J. Ray NOAA
Earth Systems Research Lab NOAA-CIRES Western
Water Assessment CLIVAR Science Symposium
Irvine, CA 14 July 2008
2
Overview

• Rich arena for applications
• Decadal scale of many water natural resource
  decisions
• Who studies these
• A couple of examples Decision and planning
  processes and use of information
• USBR reservoir management Powell-Mead Shortage
  Sharing EIS
• Front Range Municipal Water planning
• Types of uses and how this relates to needs
• Potential for use in climate risk management
  .and adaptation?
• Importance of boundary organizations, e.g.
  RISAs, IRI, etc for ongoing interactions with
  users
• Uses of decadal information needs, users, and
  uses

3
Rich arena for applications

• Societal impacts in several sectors
• water (reservoir management, municipal water
  supply), fire management, public health,
  agriculture -- esp permaculture, drought
  mitigation/planning
• Management communities who can take advantage
• Targets for user-oriented experiments,
  training/education
• Planning, their scenarios, hedging
• Interest in climate change, not familiar with
  decadal variability
• Skill
• Not as simple as threshold level required to be
  societally useful
• Shifts in risks of extreme events vs specific
  events forecasted

4
Decadal scale of many water natural resource
decisions

• Water -- UCBR/reservoirs municipal water
  supply
• Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program
• Forest Management Plans, National Parks
• Endangered species recovery plans
• Upper Colorado endangered fish
• Multi-species conservation plan for the Lower
  Colorado
• Salmon
• Public health
• Heat waves Air quality risk of
  temperature-related diseases
• Many different ongoing planning processes
• Opportunities for 2-way learning and new
  information in each new process

5
Who are the Water Resources Users of
information?

• Municipal/residential and industrial water
  suppliers organizations
• Agricultural water users and organizations
• Government managers, regulators, policymakers,
  planners (local, state, federal)
• Professional organizations networks of all of
  these
• Scientists and engineers
• Providers of products and services
• (govt, pvt, media)
• NGOs (e.g., biodiversity interests)
• Recreation interests, individual and companies
• Boundary organizations, which work between
  scientists and users
• where do these water managers talk to each other

6
Regional Integrated Science Assessments (RISA)
one set of boundary organizations

• Eight regional projects, US and border focus,
  earliest began 1995 primarily empirical studies
• Mechanisms to elicit and understand user needs
• Perception, cognitive, communications studies
• Integrate and synthesize needs across groups
• Determine what services should be part of a
  dialogue about risks
• Take advantage of social science studies of
  cognition, adoption and diffusion of innovations,
  and methodologies
• Focus on users problem orientations drought,
  hydropower, multi-purpose reservoir management
  long-term planning annual planning
• Decision studies of water management and
  agriculture
• Characterize decisions and decisionmakers
• Institutional/legal
• Organizational/behavioral
• Experiments in communicating with stakeholders
  and in creating and sustaining partnerships over
  time
• Reservoir management, drought task forces,
  climate change and state water supply planning

7
Example of long term planning and climate
Drought impacts on Lake Powell

• 2007 water year runoff into Lake Powell was
  51average, part of long term drought
• Demands on the river are increasing
• Risk of call on the river? Upper Basin States
  (CO, WY, UT, NM) may soon be required to cease
  water diversions that are junior to the 1922
  Colorado Compact in order to meet obligations to
  downstream users
• Years-decades to fill/re-fill concern about
  multi-year drought
• What if climate change reduces flows on the River?

From Harding, 2006, www.hydrosphere.com
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- USBR Long term planning, evolution of
operating criteriaPolicy landscape provides
opportunities to incorporate climate
information- Shortage sharing agreement,
Environmental Impact Statement and EIS for the
Aspinall Unit on the Gunnison River - Ongoing
implementation of endangered species recovery
plans (MSCP, CRRIP) and Glen Canyon Adaptive
Management Program
Opportunities
9
Reservoir Management uses of information

• Powell-Mead Shortage Sharing EIS
• Latest in a series of management innovations
• Most extensive use yet of climate information
• Paleo record to represent richer range of
  droughts
• Appendix U coordinated thru RISAs
• Decadal information is critical to management
  scale
• Climate risk management .and adaptation?
• More than just the right products, and occurs in
  a dialogue about risks
• Understanding the nature of risk and
  information/knowledge needed to manage risk
• Managing water in the context of changing climate
  -- adaptation strategies

10
Front Range Municipalities Study

• Uses of climate information forecastsFactors
  affecting the use of climate information and
  forecasts
• Six Front Range water providers Northern
  Colorado Water Conservancy District, Boulder,
  Westminster, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Aurora
• Serve about 60 of Colorados population
• Context
• Interactions with WWA and other climate
  information providers since 1998
• Drought in 2002
• Different contexts for growth, water supply
  reliability use change, etc

11
Perspectives from user studies What do they
want? Historical data projections of these at
a basin/sub-basin scale

• Snowpack/SWE
• Soil moisture
• Streamflow current/forecasted
• Timing of spring peak holes in a river (low
  flows)
• Reservoir levels
• Ground water
• Surface water supply index (SWSI)

• Palmer Drought Index
• Temperature
• Evapotranspiration, evaporative losses
• Demand metrics, water and hydropower
• Outlooks of these, and how ppt and temp outlooks
  relate, e.g., ppt needed to raise levels to
  near-average or other thresholds

12
Longer term municipal water planning

• Drought as part of longer term planning, beyond
  drought of record -- paleo
• Assess the potential for future systems to cope
  with drought streamflows from the historic
  record
• Planning for projects to firm-up yield
• Windy Gap surpluses from early 90s, but none
  since -- decadal variation
• Other supply options
• Demand projections primarily population based
• Temperature trend not considered
• Several agencies now using paleoclimate
  reconstructions to expand the types of drought
  they evaluate
• Interest in assessments range of potential
  climate change scenarios, droughts that have
  occurred outside the instrumental record

13
Perspectives from across user studies Users
needsLonger-range questions

• Increasing requests for information on
  interannual and decadal time scales ( 5, 10, 15
  years)
• Reservoir inflows over several years (at least
  2)
• Drought outlooks over the next decade
• Are the historical droughts of record still a
  valid planning tool?
• Are return periods for flooding still valid?
• Can we produce reliable baselines for planning
  to give the large amount of year to year and
  decade to decade variations?
• Are the assumptions of planning borne out under
  projections of varying and changing climates?
• e.g. 1906 Rio Grande treaty definition of
  extra-ordinary drought invoked 14 times over
  the last 50 years
• Do present simulations of change adequately
  represent modes of variations (ENSO, NAO, PDO
  etc.) ?
• How might ENSO change under climate change

14
Types of use

• Consult the product is consulted, e.g., looked
  up on a web page or received as a briefing or
  from other source (type1)
• Consider after consulting the product, it is
  considered in management deliberations as a
  factor potentially influencing decisions, but not
  necessarily in operational models (type 2)
• Mental models, judgement, experience.
• Projections/forecasts may be used in this way
  when they are not in appropriate forms for use in
  operational models
• Incorporate some form of the forecast is
  incorporated into an operational model that is
  utilized in operational decisions (type 3)
• May be objective
• Dialogue about risks communication of risk, i.e.
  the forecast is used to communicate with other
  managers and stakeholders about the risk of
  certain conditions and about the need to take
  actions, or to justify actions (type 4)
• Water resource decisionmakers use climate
  information (e.g. during drought) in a dialogue
  with their stakeholders about the risk of low
  inflows, flooding, e.g., and the need to take
  actions, or to justify actions

15
Whats skill got to do with it?

• Depends on.
• The decisions, whats being forecast
• often concern is about risk of events, and
  planning to mitigate, avoid,
• skill of other factors in a decision or planning
  process
• The level of climate literacy of the user, and
  how familiarity with forecasting ()
• High threshold, e.g. 75 from Pulwarty
  Redmond 97 -- true -- but an early stage in
  understanding for most users
• Better than climatology
• Improve on historic record as a planning tool
  for extremes?

16

Uses of decadal information I who, for what, how

• Long range planning by agencies at multiple space
  and time scales
• Federal USBR (reservoir plans), USFS (forest
  management plans), Drought/NIDIS (mitigation
  planning)
• State water planning
• Regional and local govts (e.g. Denver Water)
• Support water managers and planners dialogues
  with their own stakeholders
• Dialogue about climate-related risks with policy
  and planning for 20-50 year horizons
• long-lived policies likely to encounter
  multi-year droughts and impacts of observed
  trends
• Synthesis of research into products analysis
  that connect climate impacts to water management
  impacts
• Temperature --gt evaporation, rain/snow mix, urban
  demand, length of growing season
• Timing of spring runoff (Dettinger, Cayan) --gt
  water rights, reservoir reliability
• Synchroneity (Hamlet, Jain) --gt diversity of
  supply sources
• Interest in these for the Shortage Sharing EIS
  for Lakes Powell and Mead

17
Uses of decadal information II who, for what,
how

• Reducing vulnerability to climate variations
  requires consideration of a range of climate
  scenarios in planning and policy development
• multi-year droughts and the impacts increased
  temperatures
• Support for 20-50 yr planning horizons
• Capability to view and compare information from
  multiple sources
• Need user-oriented metadata, descriptions
• GIS widely used by resource agencies, state/local
  planners, but climate information has not
  generally provided by NOAA in these formats
• Connect types of data and projections
• Work with Integrated Assessment groups, including
  RISAs
• connect with specific user groups
• elicit and understand detailed user needs and
  common needs
• have long-term partnerships and experiment with
  communicating information and aboutrisk
• Understand the pathways that are used for
  information

18
Decision Support III Long-range planning and
policy

• Policy-relevant Science questions
• changes in snowpack, accumulation season, timing
  of spring runoff,
• increases in water demand from temperature
  increases
• changes in the length of the growing season
• Impact of temperature trend alone (most skill)
  ET, drought indices, soil moisture,
• Changes in ENSO with climate change
• Changes in the risk of extreme events
• Drought, runs of dry years, food risk, severe
  storms
• Cold air outbreaks, heat waves
• Disconnect between the scientific literature and
  information for managers Need for synthesis
• Panel of experts to contribute to the Lower
  Colorado office of Reclamation contribute to
  EIS(other RISAs participating)
• Model for use of decadal information engaging
  users, information publically available as a
  peer-reviewed report, education of water
  resources users
• Potential for PI-based, peer-reviewed process to
  produce information for water management?

19
Thank you Andrea J. Ray, Ph.DNOAA Earth Systems
Research Lab andrea.ray_at_noaa.gov
20
Relationships among current products, potentially
predictable, and needed climate information
Spectrum of User Needs
What is potentially predictable
Current Forecast Products
21
How drought information might be used WWA
observations

• Conversation within water management groups and
  with their stakeholders, and with scientists
• Mental models of managers for their systems are
  important as well as hydrologic and management
  models
• Relationship of information to their triggers,
  thresholds
• As interested in the information behind the
  Drought Monitor as the DM itself, in order to
  make their own assessments
• Synthesis of research into products analysis
  that connect climate impacts to water management
  impacts
• Temperature --gt evaporation, rain/snow mix, urban
  demand, length of growing season
• Timing of spring runoff (Dettinger, Cayan) --gt
  water rights, reservoir reliability
• Synchroneity (Hamlet, Jain) --gt diversity of
  supply sources

22
Issues for a policy-relevant Mountain
Hydroclimate science enterprise

• Data needed for management, calibrate, verify,
  initialize models
• Support observations and data management, and a
  coherent policy for the multi-agency system that
  supports hydroclimate data collection
• NWS data, USGS streamflow data, and National
  Resource Conservation Service snow and soil
  moisture data among many others
• Metadata too!
• Policy-relevant science questions require
  synthesis and assessment
• Individual PI-driven science only partly meets
  needs need interconnected projects
• Unfortunately, to date, scientific assessments
  like the IPCC have focused on the global and
  continental scale effects of climate change and
  hence are of limited use to regionally focused
  decision-making.
• Regional, regional, regional..
• Actually communicating with policymakers is a
  whole different talk.

23
Concluding thoughts

• Changing context has introduced criticality for
  water management of the Colorado Basin
• Sensitivity to drought increasing even if no
  change in hydrology
• Reducing vulnerability requires consideration of
  a range of climate scenarios in planning and
  policy development
• multi-year droughts and the impacts increased
  temperatures
• Support for 20-50 yr planning horizons
• Water Providers, Environmentalists, NGOs need to
  be partners in creation of science
• Embedded researchers better job on educating
  these partners
• Beyond forecasts to an additional category of
  services
• connecting climate impacts to water management
  impacts in a dialogue with managers to support
  decisions
• assessments on science by multiple PIs with
  policy focus/parter
• How does a process-oriented, PI-driven program
  participate and contribute to the larger
  service??
• Synthesis projects and X-RISA efforts are a start

24
Thank you Andrea J. Ray, Ph.DNOAA Earth Systems
Research Lab andrea.ray_at_noaa.gov
25
Decadal needs

• Integrated
• Implications of climate change temperature trend
• Support use of scenarios in water resource
  planning -- what ifs, and how resilient is the
  system, vs prediction
• Importance of boundary organizations

26
Decadal services

27
Scales
Water and other Agencies, State and Federal
Multi-Resource Coordination Management Working
Groups
AOP Annual Operating Plan
Resource
Assessment
Forecast, hydrological assessment
Hydrological decision support model with
climate forecasts
Individual agency responsibilities
Interaction of primary focus with other issues
Scenarios 1. Peak flow enhancement
opportunities 2. Time since last target peak
flows 3. Effects of hydrologic scenario on
other resource conditions 4. 5. Political issues
Hydrologic Scenarios 1. Likely April-July inflow
volume 2. Monthly release schedules for
hydropower and irrigation planning 3. 4. Flood
control 5. Minimum flows 6.
Other resource conditions
Issues 1. Recreational trout spawning 2.
Recreation management, on and around reservoir
3. Irrigation planning 4. In stream flow
conditions 5. Maintenance
scheduling 6. Legal obligations, I.e., interstate
compacts 7. Other resource conditions
Method use HDSS and climate info to discover how
diff climate scenarios are stressors on the
evolving system
Current method hydrologic decision support
model Next steps 1) process of negotiation to
develop better operational products
Method Institutional analysis whos making
decisions about resource allocation
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New Water Managers criteria

• Operational Forecast criteria
• Value
• Consistency
• Quality
• Murphy, 1993
• Decision making criteria
• Credibility of provider and reliability of
  information
• Accessibility of information, compatibility,
  complexity
• Legitimacy
• Participation of water managers stakeholders in
  plans and decisions about operations, and
  decisions influenced by acknowledgement of
  interdependence

29
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30
Thank you! Andrea J. Ray NOAA Earth Systems
Research Lab Western Water Assessment,
Andrea.ray _at_ noaa.gov
31
Whats needed for decision support

• Beyond forecasts --gt Services
• Dialogue about climate-related risks with policy
  and planning for 20-50 year horizons
• Not forecasting for these horizons, but
  long-lived policies likely to encounter
  multi-year droughts and impacts of observed
  trends
• Synthesis of research into products analysis
  that connect climate impacts to water management
  impacts
• Temperature --gt evaporation, rain/snow mix, urban
  demand, length of growing season
• Timing of spring runoff (Dettinger, Cayan) --gt
  water rights, reservoir reliability
• Synchroneity (Hamlet, Jain) --gt diversity of
  supply sources
• Interest in these for the Shortage Sharing EIS

32
Decision Support II

• Support year to year decisions on efficient
  management of storage and releases
• More important for Lower Colorado below Lake Mead
  and reservoirs above Lake Powell
• Seasonal and sub-seasonal forecasts
• Office of Hydrology (Schaake talk Thurs. p.m.)
• U.Washington group (Lettenmaier, Hamlet, Wood)
• Potential improved subseasonal streamflow
  forecasting
• Educate and support USBR and other water managers
  about these new products as they become available
• Partner to ensure that these products are
  compatible with USBR decision support models and
  frameworks

33
Conclusions

• Changing context has introduced criticality for
  water management of the Colorado Basin
• Increased risk of shortages due to increasing
  demand
• Shortages related to climate variability and
  change likely to have greater impact -- increased
  vulnerability in the system
• Points of vulnerability similar to SSD
  conclusions
• Reducing vulnerability requires consideration of
  a range of climate scenarios in planning and
  policy development
• multi-year droughts and the impacts increased
  temperatures
• Support for 20-50 yr planning horizons
• Services beyond forecasts as an additional
  category of services connecting climate impacts
  to water management impacts in a dialogue with
  managers to support decisions

34
What do they want? Longer-range questions

• Increasing requests for information on
  interannual and decadal time scales (5, 10, 15
  years into the future)
• Reservoir inflows over several years (at least
  2)
• Drought outlooks over the next decade
• Can we produce reliable baselines for planning
  to give the large amount of year to year and
  decade to decade variations?
• Are the assumptions of planning borne out under
  projections of varying and changing climates?
• e.g. 1906 Rio Grande treaty definition of
  extra-ordinary drought invoked 14 times over
  the last 50 years
• Do present simulations of change adequately
  represent modes of variations (ENSO, NAO, PDO
  etc.) ?

35
Blank slide e

• Spatial National
• Crop
• Regional
• Requesting

36
(No Transcript)
37
WWA timeline
Reservoir mgr workshops
1st WWA Workshop
WY05 Outlook Briefing SLC
Drought rapid response

• 1997-98

1999
2000-1
2002
2005-6
Climate context
El Nino
La Nina
2002 Drought
Climate Change Interest
lt-------------Extended Drought------------gt
38
Differences in perspective scientists and
managers
39
Some conclusions from across user-studies
projects needs for water-related
decisionmaking?

• Scientists need to collaborate with these
  sophisticated, but
• non-climate experts in a common language
• Variables and indices
• flexible formats, areas, time scales
• tools to relate observations, historical data,
  and forecasts to water managers perspectives,
  e.g. to their problems
• Ways to evaluate climate scenarios in their
  management scenarios
• Tools for managers to talk to their stakeholders
• Benchmarks beyond idealized value
• Partnerships
• Interactions maintained over time
• Influence of scientists on the drought planning
  process and of water managers on science done
• Innovation in both science and management from
  interaction
• Fora for communication, learning, bringing
  perspectives together

40
Current uses of climate information in municipal
water management

• Use of the instrumental record of hydro-climate
  variables in planning and operations models
• The use of climate influenced hydro-climate
  parameters to generate projections of streamflow,
  reservoir contents, or water supply
• SWE, historic records of streamflow, water year
  precipitation
• Use of paleoclimate data, e.g. reconstructions of
  SWE or streamflow
• Use of forecasts of climate variables, e.g.,
  precipitation or temperature, such as the
  NOAA/CPC Monthly and Seasonal Climate Forecasts,
  or medium-range weather forecasts
• Climate variability reflected in annual and
  longer term operations in ways other than use of
  forecasts

41
USBR Long term planning, evolution of operating
criteriaHowever, in the event of a shortage,
vague and often contradictory laws and policy
mandatesNon-allocated uses, e.g. recreational
and environmental are particularly sensitive, yet
these have increased in economic importance2007
policy landscape provides opportunities to
incorporate climate informationOngoing
implementation of endangered species recovery
plans (MSCP, CRRIP) and Glen Canyon Adaptive
Management Program Shortage sharing agreement,
EIS and the Environmental Impact Statement for
the Aspinall Unit on the Gunnison River
Opportunities