Priority 1: Investigating Weather and Climate Information Needs and Decision Making

Incorporating Climate Change Information in Water Utility Planning

Background

Climate change is likely to have profound impacts on water resource availability, flood frequency, watershed characteristics and water quality. Yet most water resource managers, and in particular, urban water providers, have only a limited understanding of climate change and how it may affect their ability to continue serving their customers' needs in a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable manner. To address these concerns, NCAR scientists Kathleen Miller and David Yates have developed a program to educate urban water providers about climate change (causes, processes, and likely changes in temperature and precipitation), and how information on future climate change might be incorporated into their longer-term decision-making processes.

Progress

Miller and Yates published Climate Change and Water: A Primer for Municipal Water Providers, a scientifically-sound, easily-understood educational resource on climate change for municipal water industry professionals. Copies have been distributed to all of the American Water Works Research Foundation's (AwwaRF) more than 900 member utilities. In addition, Miller and Yates have made several presentations on this work to both industry groups and to broader audiences, emphasizing the potential impacts of climate change on water resources and useful approaches to planning in the context of inevitable uncertainties. In March 2006, Miller presented this work at a conference at the University of Utah School of Law which was attended by a broad spectrum of citizens and policy makers from the Western states. A paper summarizing the presentation will appear in the Fall 2006 issue of the Journal of Land, Resources and Environmental Law.

Plans

Significant uncertainties regarding local-scale hydrologic changes present both practical and conceptual challenges to urban water planners. As a result, NCAR and the AwwaRF have initiated a new project that is focused on helping water utilities to plan effectively for adaptation to climate-change impacts, despite the uncertainties. The project will develop decision support tools and a framework for analysis that water utilities can use to explore their options for managing climate change risks. During 2007, the NCAR team will collaborate with a small number of urban water providers to develop a structured decision-analytic approach to infrastructure and management planning that will incorporate results from a suite of climate models into a simple but useful integrated water management model of relevant water resources.

For Further Information

SERE Annual Report