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

拟议的CRD项目的目标是为行业合作伙伴Water SMART Solutions Ltd.提供创新的解决方案，以制定对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，为艾伯塔省南部的Oldman和South Saskatchewan河子流域制定适应性水管理战略。这种新的科学方法结合了统计和动态建模、来自气候代理和水和气象仪网络的数据，以及来自区域和全球气候模型集合的输出。最常被报道的未来气候情景是平均气候和水位的预测变化。流域和基础设施在这些平均情况下比在极端情况下更容易管理：洪水，特别是干旱。拟议的项目通过分析高分辨率古气候数据档案和气候模型的产出，调查了最近、过去和不久的将来区域水气候的各种变异性。利用这些数据，我们将建立和运行年和季节径流的统计模型，作为驱动北美西部水气候年际至年代际变化的大尺度气候模式(遥相关指数)的函数。这种变异性的大小对于我们理解区域气候制度的稳定性，以及对罕见事件，特别是持续干旱的水资源规划和管理都很重要。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，使一大群水资源管理者和来自河流流域的其他利益相关者能够参加实时建模会议。

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.