Case Studies in Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation

1
Case Studies in Climate Change Impacts and
Adaptation
Applications to Greater Victoria, the Fraser
River Basin and Quebec.

• November 24, 2005
• Kananaskis Researcher Retreat

2
Overall Goal

• To analyze for stakeholders the different climate
  change impacts on rainfall in the western and
  eastern Canada, through 4 case studies Victoria
  BC, Fraser River Basin, Montreal and Niagara.
• Determine impacts on water basins, stream flows,
  and urban drainage systems.
• Develop DSS for Strategic Plans of the industry
  partners and stakeholders.
• Builds on earlier research by Byrne-Dore-Gan.

3
Research Team

• Mohammed Dore, PI (Brock University) ,
• Thian Gan, researcher, (University of Alberta)
  and
• Van Nguyen, researcher,(McGill and Ouranos),
• With INDUSTRY PARTNERS CRD Greater Victoria,
  ALCAN, OURANOS, Env Can, Niagara Region, FRB,
  City of Montreal, NWRI.
• New funded partners now include
• Canadian Institute of Climate Studies, U Vic
• BC Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection
• JISAO, University of Washington and NOAA

4
Key Challenges/Goals

• Key Challenge(s) Being Addressed are
• 1. Selecting the most appropriate GCMs
• 2. Validating baseline precipitation data
• 3 Developing new downscaling methods
• 4 Downscaling precipitation projections for the
  case study regions
• 5. Testing hydrologic models for stream flows
• 6.Developing a number of scenarios, as
  recommended by IPCC Guidelines
• 7. Proposing measures for adapting water
  infrastructure to future variability of
  precipitation impacts

5
Relevant State-of-The-Research

• The main climate change models (called GCMs) are
  developed by Canada, US, UK, Germany, Australia,
  and Japan.
• The GCMs make projections to 2099 for some 18
  meteorological variables
• But these models only take into account
  ocean-atmosphere interactions and have a coarse
  resolution, dividing the globe into grid boxes of
  about 3.75 degrees longitude and latitude.
• Hence all projections for given grid boxes have
  to be downscaled for any given location.
• All climate change scientists are asked to follow
  the IPCC Guidelines so that results and scenarios
  can be compared.
• Canada is improving the resolution in the next
  generation of models by producing RCMs.
• We are working with RCMs as they become
  available, but they still need downscaling.
• One of our main contributions is developing new
  downscaling techniques and making them available
  as public goods.

6
Approach

• Some parsimonious existing downscaling methods
  are mathematically invalid. Hence the gap.
• Therefore Dore is working with Trevor Murdock
  (CICS, UVic) on a statistical technique based on
  ARIMA methods
• Gan is working with SJ Burges (U of Washington,
  Seattle) on physics-based hydrologic models such
  as MISBA of Meteo France, and with Russian
  scientists, Gusev and Nasonova, on their model
  called Soil Water-Atmosphere-Plants (SWAP)
• Van Nguyen is working with Phillipe Gachon at
  OURANOS Env Canada on a statistical technique
  based on MATLAB to develop new downscaling
  methods for simulating daily precipitation using
  statistical and stochastic approaches
• We will then apply these methods to the 4 case
  study areas compare the results.

7
Stage of Research

• All 3 of the researchers have made some progress,
  with work reflected by supervised graduate
  theses.
• E.g. my own ARIMA based work is being tested for
  Victoria and Niagara I am now extending it to
  projecting EXTREME weather events, using GCMs.
• GAN modified a land surface scheme called MISBA
  and successfully tested in Alberta with financial
  support of Canadian GEWEX, MAGS-2, and Climate
  Change Action Fund. It will next be extended to
  Fraser River Basin, British Columbia.
• Nguyen has completed assessment of existing
  statistical downscaling methods for scenarios
  generation. His next step is the development of
  new downscaling methods for simulating daily
  precipitation using multivariate statistical and
  stochastic techniques.

8
Key Findings/Observations

• Making precipitation projections and scenarios is
  not easy as there exist no independent methods of
  verification.
• Precipitation is a nonlinear phenomenon and hence
  essentially non-reproducible.
• The best we can do is produce distributions with
  plausible characteristics.
• It is important to check with stakeholders as to
  how plausible these projections are.
• But even they are hamstrung by their recent
  experience.

9
Key Findings/Observations

• Therefore we need to appeal to and be guided by
  other general principles, such as
• The Precautionary Principle
• A No Regrets Policy
• Principle of Insufficient Reason (La Place)
• Principle of Extreme Risk Aversion

10
Key Findings

• We find marked differences in what will happen to
  precipitation over the next 100 years depending
  on the location. E.g. for Victoria the rainfall
  distribution will increase in variance and become
  more leptokurtic, whereas is the east, we expect
  both the mean and the variance to increase.
• In both cases we expect heavier downpours, taxing
  water infrastructure.
• Analyses of NCEP and local daily precipitation
  data for the greater Montreal region indicates
  that local precipitation was dominated by
  large-scale climate variables such as the zonal
  velocities, meridional velocities, specific
  humidities, geopotential height, and vorticity.
  But more work needs to be done.

11
Insights on Knowledge Transfer

• We have had some success in passing on our
  findings to our partners. E.g. both Victoria and
  Niagara will be using our results for their
  Strategic Plans.
• We have some interesting results for the
  Athabasca river basin, South Saskatchewan River
  Basin which will be passed to Alpac, Ducks
  Unlimited, Alberta Environment. For Fraser River
  Basin results, stakeholders are ALCAN and BC
  Hydro, and BC Ministry of WLAP, and others.
• Results of our research on downscaling of
  precipitation are currently being used to study
  the impacts of climate variability on the extreme
  rainfall intensity-duration-frequency relations
  for the City of Montreal.

12
Opportunities

• The opportunity exists to extend our network with
  our new partners such as CICS at Uvic, JISAO at U
  Wash., and also with the Global Environmental
  and Climate Change Centre at McGill, a new Quebec
  NCE in climate change. We also plan to coordinate
  with the Water Cluster at OCE-CRESTech.
• In the next phase our research group will extend
  its proven track record with collaboration with
  other international groups such as WMO,
  UNESCO. But strong links with Canadian users (
  OURANOS, Hydro-Quebec,BC WLAP, etc.) will
  continue. Hence, research results will be meet
  the needs of stakeholders and policy makers. Our
  emphasis next year will be on KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER
  to partners.

13
Collaborative Interests

• Our collaborative interests are to extend our
  network first within Canada and then to seek
  review comments from our peers in the USA,
  France, UK, Australia and Japan.
• The Climate Science research community is small
  and highly specialized.
• The challenge is to persuade the user community
  to incorporate climate change into their
  decision-making.