Practical and direct downscaling of water level projections for adaptation planning

拟议的CRD项目的目标是优化和验证预测未来水位变化的实用方法，并将这些水文气候情景应用于艾伯塔省中部红鹿河流域的适应规划。这些方法和模型将增强Water SMART Solutions Ltd.为政府和行业提供务实和可实施的适应性应对气候变化对地表水供应的影响的能力。大学研究人员和工业合作伙伴之间现有的合作伙伴关系一直是有效和富有成效的，并满足了客户的即时需求。拟议的CRD项目将使我们能够合作改进和验证模型和方法，并确保这些方法可以移植到其他流域。这项研究具有创新性，它不同于传统的水文对气候变化的响应模型，该模型提供了有关流域产水量潜在变化的重要信息，但通常从短持续时间的校准时间序列继承气候变异性。相比之下，我们的项目通过纳入从树轮代理推断和从区域气候模型得出的水文数据，调查了最近过去和不久的将来区域水文气候的全部变异性。最新一代的RCM包括模拟流域径流的先进陆面方案。这些高分辨率模式嵌套在全球环流模式中，这些模式模拟了驱动区域水文状况年际至年代际变化的海洋-大气环流。年际变化和极端水文事件，而不是平均径流的长期趋势，是管理流域以及设计和维护输水和蓄水结构的最大挑战。大学研究人员将与Water SMART Solutions及其承包商合作，将我们对水文气候变异性的预测应用于河流流域管理模型，并将该模型现场运行，该模型涉及来自红鹿河流域的一大群水资源管理者和其他利益相关者。

The objectives of the proposed CRD project are to optimize and validate a practical approach to projecting future water level variability, and to apply these hydroclimatic scenarios to adaptation planning in the Red Deer River basin of central Alberta. The methods and models will enhance the capacity of WaterSMART Solutions Ltd. to provide government and industry with pragmatic and implementable adaptive responses to climate change impacts on surface water supplies. An existing partnership between the university researchers and industrial partner has been effective and productive, and met the immediate needs of clients. The proposed CRD project will enable us to collaboratively refine and validate the models and methods and ensure that the methods are transferable to other river basins. The research is innovative by departing from the conventional modeling of hydrologic responses to climate change, which produces important information about potential changes in basin water yield, but usually inherits climate variability from a calibration time series of short duration. In contrast, our project investigates the full range of variability in the regional hydroclimate of the recent past and near future by incorporating hydrological data inferred from tree ring proxies and derived from Regional Climate Models. The latest generation of RCMs includes advanced land surface schemes that simulate basin runoff. These high-resolution models are nested within Global Circulation Models that simulate the ocean-atmosphere circulation that drives the inter-annual to decadal variability of the regional hydrologic regime. Inter-annual variability and extreme hydrologic events, rather than long-term trends in mean runoff, present most of the challenge for managing watersheds and for designing and maintaining water conveyance and storage structures. The university researchers will work with WaterSMART Solutions and its contractors to apply our projections of hydroclimatic variability to a river basin management model and to a live run of the model involving a large group of water managers and other stakeholders from the Red Deer River basin.