Sensitivity of Colorado Stream Flows to Climate Change Dennis P. Lettenmaier Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Washington Ninth SAHRA Annual Meeting Tucson September 23, 2009
Jan 19, 2018
Sensitivity of Colorado Stream Flows to Climate ChangeDennis P. Lettenmaier
Department of Civil and Environmental EngineeringUniversity of Washington
Ninth SAHRA Annual Meeting
Tucson
September 23, 2009
Outline of this talk
1. Review of recent studies2. Understanding the hydrologic sensitivities3. Unanswered questions
Magnitude and Consistency of Model-Projected Changesin Annual Runoff by Water Resources Region, 2041-2060
Median change in annual runoff from 24 numerical experiments (color scale)and fraction of 24 experiments producing common direction of change (inset numerical values).
+25%
+10%
+5%
+2%
-2%
-5%
-10%
-25%
Dec
reas
eIn
crea
se
(After Milly, P.C.D., K.A. Dunne, A.V. Vecchia, Global pattern of trends in streamflow andwater availability in a changing climate, Nature, 438, 347-350, 2005.)
96%
75%67%
62%87%
87%
71%
67%62%
58%
67%
62%58%
67%100%
from Seager et al, Science, 2007
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
1.6
2001
2007
2013
2019
2025
2031
2037
2043
2049
2055
2061
2067
2073
2079
2085
2091
2097
YEAR
(mm
/day
)
AVG_PRECIP
EVAP
P - E Means, replotted for Colorado River basin
Christensen et al, Climatic Change, 2004
Time series Annual Average
Period 1 2010-2039 Period 2 2040-2069 Period 3 2070-2098
hist. avg.
ctrl. avg.
PCM Projected Colorado R. Temperature
Hydrology and water management implications
hist. avg.
ctrl. avg.
PCM Projected Colorado R. Precipitation
Timeseries Annual Average
Period 1 2010-2039 Period 2 2040-2069 Period 3 2070-2098
Annual Average Hydrograph
Simulated Historic (1950-1999) Period 1 (2010-2039)Control (static 1995 climate) Period 2 (2040-2069)
Period 3 (2070-2098)
Storage ReservoirsRun of River Reservoirs
CRRM
• Basin storage aggregated into 4 storage reservoirs
– Lake Powell and Lake Mead have 85% of basin storage
• Reservoir evaporation = f(reservoir surface area, mean monthly temperature)
• Hydropower = f(release, reservoir elevation)
• Monthly timestep
• Historic Streamflows to Validate
• Projected Inflows to assess future performance of system
Total Basin Storage
Annual Releases to the Lower Basin
target release
Postmortem: Christensen and Lettenmaier (HESSD, 2007) – multimodel ensemble analysis with 11 IPCC AR4
models (downscaled as in C&L, 2004)
Question: Why such a large discrepancy in projected Colorado River flow changes?
• ~6=7% annual flow reduction in Christensen and Lettenmaier (2007)
• 10-25% by Milly et al (2005)
• > 35% by Seager et al (2007)
Wood et al (2002; 2004) downscaling method removes bias by mapping from PDF of GCM output to PDF of observations on a monthly basis
PDFs are estimated for each grid cell and month of the year
This same mapping is then applied to the future climate run.
The method does not attempt to preserve GCM
inferred differences in precipitation. There is in general no reason to assume that the
GCM precipitation changes are applicable to higher spatial resolutions
Diagnosis
All precipitation values were rescaled so as to match GCM changes on an annual basis
This resulted in a change (reduction) in mean annual precipitation for 2040-2070 from 1.9% (CL2007) to 2.6% for A2 emissions scenario (closest to A1B used in M2005 and S2007) The associated annual mean runoff reduction (Imperial Dam, averaged over 11 GCMs) changed from 5.9 to 10.0%
This is within (although at the lower end of) the range reported in M2005
Note that M2005 and S2007 use the A1B IPCC emissions scenario, vs A2 scenario used by CL2007
M2007 and S2007 use (partially) different GCM runs and procedures (M2005 count multiple ensembles from a single GCM as separate runs
CL2007 Re-runs
Understanding the hydrologic sensitivities
Dooge (1992; 1999):
For temperature, it’s more convenient to think in terms of sensitivity (v. elasticity)
where ΨP is elasticity of runoff with respect to precipitation
Inferred runoff elasticities wrt precipitation for major Colorado River tributaries, using method of Sankarasubramanian and Vogel (2001)
Visual courtesy Hugo Hidalgo, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Model Precipitation-Elasticity
Temp-sensitivity (Tmin & Tmax ) %/ 0C
Temp-sensitivity ( Tmax) %/ 0C
Flow @ Lees Ferry(MACF)
VIC 1.9 -4.4 -6.6 15.43NOAH 1.81 -5.7 -7.8 17.43SAC 1.77 -5.3 -8.2 15.76
Summary of precipitation elasticities and temperatures sensitivities for Colorado River at Lees Ferry for VIC, NOAH, and SAC models
Spatial distribution of precipitation elasticities
Censored spatial distribution of annual runoff
VIC Precipitation elasticity histograms, all grid cells and 25% of grid cells producing most (~73%) of runoff
Composite seasonal water cycle, by quartile of the runoff elasticity distribution
Temperature sensitivity (equal change in Tmin and Tmax) histograms, all grid cells and 25% of grid cells producing most (~73%) of runoff
Spatial distribution of temperature sensitivities (equal changes in Tmin and Tmax)
Censored spatial distribution of annual runoff
Composite seasonal water cycle, by quartile of the temperature sensitivity (equal change in Tmin and Tmax) distribution
So is there, or is there not, a dichotomy between the various estimates of mid-century Colorado River runoff changes?
Replotted from Seager et al (2007)
b) On the other hand, from Seager et al (2007), very roughly, mid-century ΔP -18%, so for = 1.5-1.9, and temperature sensitivity -0.05 - -0.07, and ΔT 2 oC, ΔQ 40% (vs > 50% + from GCM multimodel average)
a) Lowest mid-century estimate (Christensen and Lettenmaier, 2007) is based on a precipitation downscaling method that yields smaller mid-century precipitation changes. Adjusting for this difference nearly doubles the projected change to around 10% by mid century – not far from Milly et al (2005), but still well below Seager et al (2007)
More important, though, is the question: In the context of hydrologic sensitivities to (global) climate change, does the land surface hydrology matter, or does it just passively respond to changes in the atmospheric circulation?
i.e., in the long-term mean, VIMFC P-E Q, so do we really need to know anything about the land surface to determine the runoff sensitivity (from coupled models)?
OR is the coupled system sensitive to the spatial variability in the processes that control runoff generation (and hence ET), and in turn, are there critical controls on the hydrologic sensitivities that are not (and cannot, due to resolution constraints) be represented in current coupled models?
The answer …
… Probably lies in high resolution, coupled land-atmosphere simulations, that resolve areas producing most runoff, and their role in modulating (or exacerbating) regional scale sensitivities.