Future hydroclimatic extremes and adaptive basin planning, Oldman and South Saskatchewan river basins

拟议的CRD项目的目标是为工业合作伙伴WaterSMART Solutions Ltd.提供创新的解决方案，用于开发未来气候和水资源可用性的预测，将这些未来情景应用于该公司的水文和流域管理模型，并与利益相关者合作，为阿尔伯塔省南部的奥德曼和南萨斯喀彻温河子流域制定适应性水管理战略。这种新颖的科学方法结合了统计和动态建模、来自气候代用物和水和气象测量网的数据以及区域和全球气候模型集合的输出。最常报告的未来气候情景是对平均气候和水位变化的预估。流域和基础设施在这些平均条件下比在极端条件下（洪水，尤其是干旱）更容易管理。提议的项目通过分析高分辨率古气候数据档案和气候模式的输出，调查最近过去和不久将来区域水文气候的全范围变率。利用这些数据，我们将构建和运行年度和季节流量的统计模型，作为大尺度气候模式（遥相关指数）的函数，这些模式驱动北美西部水文气候的年际到年代际变化。这种变化尺度对于我们理解区域气候制度的平稳性，以及对罕见事件（特别是持续干旱）的水资源规划和管理非常重要。这所大学的研究人员将与WaterSMART Solutions及其承包商合作，将我们对水文气候变化的预测应用到一个流域管理模型中，使一大批水资源管理人员和流域的其他利益相关者能够参加现场建模会议。

The objectives of the proposed CRD project are to provide the industrial partner, WaterSMART Solutions Ltd., with innovative solutions for developing projections of future climate and water availability, applying these future scenarios to the company's hydrological and watershed management models, and working with stakeholders develop adaptive water management strategies for the Oldman and South Saskatchewan River Sub-basins in southern Alberta. The novel scientific methodology employs a combination of statistical and dynamic modeling, data from climate proxies and a network of water and weather gauges, and output from ensembles of regional and global climate models. The most commonly reported scenarios of future climate are projected changes in mean climate and water levels. Watersheds and infrastructure are much more easily managed for these average conditions than for extremes: flooding and especially drought. The proposed project investigates the full range of variability in the regional hydroclimate of the recent past and near future by analyzing an archive of high-resolution paleoclimate data and the outputs from climate models. Using these data, we will construct and run statistical models of annual and seasonal streamflow as a function of the large-scale climate patterns (teleconnection indices) that drive the interannual to decadal variability of the hydroclimate of western North America. This scale of variability is important for our understanding of the stationarity of the regional climate regime, and for water resource planning and management for infrequent events, specifically sustained drought. The university researchers will work WaterSMART Solutions and its contractors to apply our projections of hydroclimatic variability to a river basin management model enabling a live modeling session involving a large group of water managers and other stakeholders from the river basins.