Climate Risks to Industrial Water Supplies in the Lower North Saskatchewan River Basin

拟议项目的目标是评估气候变化对萨斯喀彻温省中东部北部萨斯喀彻温河下游（NSRB）工业供水的风险。这将需要了解全球变暖的区域后果和区域气候制度的自然变率。我们将根据树木年轮重建过去300-700年的自然变化，并随机地将这些推断的水位缩小到每周估计的水平。树木年轮记录具有比仪器水和天气数据更长的优点。它们也早于人类对全球气候系统的重大干扰。我们将从最新一代的区域气候模式中得出未来气候和径流的预测，这些模式结合了地表方案来模拟地表水文。通过吸收过去几个世纪和未来几十年的水文气候数据，我们将确定气候模式模拟内部（非强迫）气候变率的效果，以及模式预估的变率在多大程度上超过古气候记录中的自然变率。年际至年代际变化和极端水文事件对水资源管理的挑战大于水量缓慢变化的增量。利用PIEVC协议作为气候风险评估框架，我们将与工业合作伙伴、赫斯基能源和SaskPower以及政府监管机构合作，从可能性和后果方面确定工业供水面临的气候风险。拟议的研究将通过提供数据和知识来限制与气候变化和潜在水资源短缺有关的风险，直接使工业合作伙伴受益，并间接使加拿大能源工业受益。

The objective of the proposed project is to evaluate climate change risks to industrial water supplies in the lower North Saskatchewan River Basin (NSRB) of east-central Saskatchewan. This will require knowledge of both the regional consequences of global warming and the natural variability of the regional climate regime. We will reconstruct the natural variability of the past 300-700 years from tree rings, and stochastically downscale these inferred water levels to weekly estimates. Tree-ring records have the advantage of greater length than instrumental water and weather data. They also pre-date significant human interference with the global climate system. We will derive projections of future climate and runoff from the latest generation of Regional Climate Models that incorporate Land Surface Schemes for modeling surface hydrology. By assimilating hydroclimatic data for past centuries and future decades, we will determine how well climate models simulate internal (unforced) climatic variability and the extent to which model projected variability exceeds the natural variability in the paleoclimate record. Inter-annual to decadal variability and extreme hydrologic events present a greater challenge for managing water resources than incremental slow-onset changes in water yield. Using the PIEVC protocol as a climate risk assessment framework, we will collaborate with the industrial partners, Husky Energy and SaskPower, and with government regulators to identify climate risks to industrial water supplies in terms of their probability and consequences. The proposed research will directly benefit the industrial partners, and indirectly the Canadian energy industry, by providing data and knowledge to limit risks related to climate change and potential water scarcity.