To support ecosystem research and impacts assessment, CIG extended the project to include specific meteorological and hydrological variables needed to support ecological studies (see discussion in Section 3). %PDF-1.6 % 2012. Although a number of pilot climate change studies have been carried out in the CRB in collaboration with various water management agencies in the past (e.g., NWPCC, Citation2005), the RMJOC study was something of a landmark in that it was the first time that the BPA, USBR, and USACE used climate change information in coordinated interagency planning exercises in the CRB. Salem, Oregon. Climate Resilience Program - Columbia Basin Trust July temperatures hover in the 90s, with several afternoons during the summer pushing the thermometer reading as high as 100 to 105 degrees. The bias-corrected monthly values are then used to rescale the simulated daily flow sequences produced by the hydrologic model to produce bias-corrected daily streamflows. Fig. How do I view content? John Day basin century climate change: +1.5 degF day temperature, +3.2 degF night temperature, -0.4 inch (2%) less precipitation. Les principaux produits de ltude comprennent des donnes sommaires pour environ 300 sites fluviaux dans la rgion pacifique nordouest et des produits mensuels de Systme d'information gographique pour 21 variables hydrologiques couvrant tout le domaine ltude. A family of greenhouse gas emissions scenarios used in the IPCC effort (Nakienovi et al. In addition to creating these datasets, the RMJOC agencies worked together to adopt a set of methods for incorporating these data into those longer-term planning activities. Figure 10 shows a map of Q100 ratios (future Q100 to historical Q100) for 297 river locations and a scatterplot of the Q100 ratio as a function of winter temperature regime in each basin. Figures and summary tables for long-term average monthly precipitation, monthly average temperature, evapotranspiration, PET4 (Table 2), PET5 (Table 2), total column soil moisture, SWE, combined flow (runoff+baseflow). Increasing low flow risks (declining 7Q10 values) are widespread across the domain as a result of the combined effects of declining snowpack (which tends to result in earlier streamflow recession and lower flows in late summer, see Fig. The Columbia Basin Climate Change Scenarios Project (CBCCSP) was conceived as a comprehensive hydrologic database to support climate change planning, impacts assessment, and adaptation in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) by a diverse user community with varying technical capacity over a wide range of spatial scales. Southwest wind 5 to 15 mph with gusts to around 25 mph. The same procedure is followed for estimating extreme low flows, except the lowest 7-day flow is extracted for each water year, and 7Q10 (the extreme 7-day low flow with a return interval of 10 years) is estimated. Corresponding shifts in the seasonal timing of streamflow are also relatively small in the Canadian CRB until late in the twenty-first century. Hydrology and water resources research at CIG was particularly focused on the use of experimental climate and hydrologic forecasts for the CRB (Hamlet & Lettenmaier, Citation1999a, Citation2000; Lettenmaier & Hamlet, Citation2003; Leung, Hamlet, Lettenmaier, & Kumar, Citation1999) in the context of decision support for various water management applications (Hamlet, Huppert, & Lettenmaier, Citation2002; Lee, Hamlet, Fitzgerald, & Burges, Citation2011; Voisin et al., Citation2006). The study employs a state-of-the-art, end-to-end data processing sequence that moves from raw GCM output to a set of final hydrological products that can be accessed by the user community from a web-accessible database. Impacts of Near-Term Climate Change on Irrigation Demands and Crop Yields in the Columbia River Basin, Impacts of climate change on the state of Indiana: ensemble future projections based on statistical downscaling. A number of high-visibility studies have made use of the CBCCSP database to date, a few of which are summarized below. The dark red lines show the average of the climate change ensemble. Monthly hydrographs in different portions of the domain primarily reflect changes in snow accumulation and melt processes and seasonal changes in precipitation (generally wetter falls, winters, and springs and drier summers). Lee. A calibrated 1/16 degree latitude-longitude resolution implementation of the VIC hydrologic model over the Columbia River basin was used to produce historical simulations and 77 future hydrologic projections associated with three different statistical downscaling methods and three future time periods (2020s, 2040s, and 2080s). Thus, by selecting 10 GCM scenarios with good historical performance that also spanned the range of impacts, we effectively reduced the computational and storage requirements of the CBCCSP by approximately a factor of two. Thus, depending on their needs and level of technical sophistication, stakeholders can make the best use of the study products by extracting information at different points in the data processing sequence, all of which are available on the study web site. A number of sub-basins are nested within each other, as shown in the right panel along with their relative sizes. The largest increases in flooding are in mixed-rain-and-snow basins whose mid-winter temperatures are presently within a few degrees of freezing. 1555. It drains roughly 260,000 square miles and travels more than 1,240 miles from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to its confluence with the Pacific Ocean. 7 Left panel: Simulated historical 1 April snow water equivalent (SWE) (upper right) and percentage changes in 1 April SWE for two emissions scenarios and three future time periods extracted from the CD VIC scenarios. Climate Adaptation | Columbia Basin Rural Development Institute Preparing for climatic change: The water, salmon, and forests of the Pacific Northwest. The highest value of baseflow is Ds max (in millimetres of runoff per time step) for a saturated soil layer; Ws represents the soil moisture threshold below which the baseflow curve is linear; and Ds is the baseflow value (in millimetres) at this breakpoint. Yakima River Basin Study (, Washington State Department of Community Trade and Economic Development, Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model, A Monte Carlo hydropower and water resources simulation model developed by the NWPCC, Hybrid Delta statistical downscaling method, HYDropower SIMulation, a hydropower and water resources simulation model used by the BPA in the CRB, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Detailed forecast for Lower Columbia Basin of Washington Rest Of Today Partly sunny. (Citation2010) over the entire PNW (Tohver et al. It is important to acknowledge that opinions differ on the utility or even possibility of improving ensembles of future projections based on the ability to simulate the past climate (e.g., Gleckler, Taylor, & Doutriaux, Citation2008). Home | Columbia Basin Climate Source The MRB encompasses 24 terrestrial ecosystems, providing habitat for 100 species of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians Its floodplain supports 40% of the waterfowl and wading birds in North America, and the MRB's . USFWS (US Fish & Wildlife Service). Weather for Monday, Feb. 27. Similarly, three different downscaling approaches were used in the study, each with its own advantages and limitations in the context of different natural resources management applications (Hamlet et al., 2010a). Wind speed data are based on interpolated NCEP reanalysis data (Kalnay et al., Citation1996) using methods described by Elsner et al. Based on these substantial differences in hydrologic impacts it is difficult to escape the conclusion that management of water resources in the Canadian portions of the basin will play a crucial role in the ability of US water managers to adapt to more substantial changes in streamflow timing and summer low flows in the United States. Peak flows actually increase at many sites in Canada because of increasing fall, winter, and spring precipitation in this part of the domain, although the peak flow also occurs about a month earlier. For each streamflow location (and its associated contributing basin area), a set of identical products is available on the study web site (CIG, Citation2013b). The Columbia River basin will see an increase in flooding over the next 50 years as a result of climate change, new modeling from Oregon State University indicates. The magnitude of hydrologic extremes such as Q100 and 7Q10 are expected to shift markedly in some basins in response to cool season warming, increasing cool season precipitation, and warmer, drier summers. The same basic effects are seen in the SWE2PR maps, where snowmelt remains dominant in the northern tip of the CRB even at the end of the twenty-first century, whereas in the US portions of the domain there are widespread transformations of mixed-rain-and-snow river basins to rain-dominant basins and snowmelt-dominant basins to mixed-rain-and-snow basins. Although these ongoing research and outreach efforts had already laid an extensive foundation in support of pilot climate services in the PNW, starting in 20062007 it was realized that a much more comprehensive and focused effort to provide hydrologic climate change scenarios was needed if stakeholders and water professionals in the region were to take the next steps in preparing for climate change. Highs in the lower 80s. 5 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG. People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. Instead our primary goal was to encompass the approximate range of all available scenarios while reducing costs by downscaling projections from a subset of the larger group of 20 GCMs (Hamlet et al., 2010a). A number of regional partners provided recommendations for streamflow locations and other in-kind support including Jesse Abner (MDNR), Steve Running (University of Montana), Hal Anderson (IDWR) Levi Brekke, Pat McGrane and John Roache (USBR), Carolyn Fitzgerald (Seattle District USACE), Seshu Vaddey and Randy Wortman (Portland District USACE). Warming of the global climate is unequivocal. NWAC Softball: Lower Columbia splits double-header at Yakima Valley to Colombia - Climate | Britannica Both floods (Q100) and extreme 7-day low flows (7Q10) increase in intensity for most of the river sites simulated. This choice was imposed by WDOE. Agencies at the state and local levels were similarly engaged, two notable examples in the PNW being King County, Washington (Casola et al., Citation2005), and the WDOE, which manages (among many other water-related issues) the state's water resources and water quality permitting programs. Highs in the lower to mid 60s. A 20 percent chance of rain showers in the evening. Why cattle ranching is the biggest deforestation driver in the Amazon These emerging needs ultimately led to the CBCCSP, and similar efforts in BC led by PCIC (Werner, Schnorbus, Shrestha, & Eckstrand, Citation2013). La base de donnes du CBCCSP s'est avre une ressource publique prcieuse qui a permis de rduire normment les cots lis un certain nombre dtudes de haute visibilit dans la rgion pacifique nordouest et dans l'ouest des tatsUnis axes sur la coordination technique et la planification. In most basins with substantial snowpack, elevated soil moisture in winter accompanies warming in the simulations resulting from more infiltration from rain in the fall and winter months (Fig. This is a good example of the use of the study data to support relatively fine-scale planning needs. This study represents one of the first attempts to dynamically couple a sophisticated, physically based hydrologic model with a detailed crop model to estimate the integrated impacts on water supply and crop viability at a range of spatial scales. #! O Those who lack their own hydrologic model, but wish to make additional runs themselves, can obtain the calibrated VIC model implementation. The presence of glaciers in Canada (not included in the CBCCSP simulations) may further exacerbate the discrepancies between impacts to summer flows in the United States and Canada in late summer (Werner et al., Citation2013). The methods are discussed in more detail in these references, but a brief description of the procedure is given here to help orient the reader. (Citation2010), but the essential idea behind the methods is that monthly gridded data are based only on serially complete and quality-controlled HCN and AHCCD stations (thus ensuring self-consistent long-term trends based on the same group of stations), but daily variations within the month come from re-gridded daily co-op station data, which add additional spatial detail on an event basis at daily time scales (Hamlet & Lettenmaier, Citation2005).