Sustainable Water Systems in a Changing Climate

目前人们已经充分认识到，气候变化正在改变降雨和降雪的模式，使温度升高，影响冰和永久冻土的融化，加剧现有的水资源供应和质量问题，并增加与水有关的自然灾害的频率。对水系统的影响使加拿大社会和环境付出了巨大的代价。最近的例子来自加拿大公共安全部，在过去的几年里，仅洪水造成的损失每年就达到10亿美元左右。2013年的卡尔加里洪水经常被认为是加拿大历史上损失最惨重的自然灾害之一。相比之下，2001年至2003年加拿大大草原上的干旱也可以被认为是相当的。加拿大各组织、各省、地区、机构、水资源专业人员和公民本身在管理新的与水有关的风险方面准备不足。成功地适应即将到来的现实需要公众对气候变化科学的认同；需要实施适应政策，同时有效应对风险，同时保持知情。水是一种局部可变资源，对洪水和干旱等气候相关灾害的脆弱性因地区而异。这种对危险的脆弱性还源于机构未能充分准备和管理现有和不断演变的风险。在这方面，阿尔伯塔省和加拿大所有其他省份都面临着特殊的挑战，因为它们的陆地面积大，地理条件多样，考虑到寒冷地区，气候和水文制度范围广泛。气候引起的大气变化；由于它们与土地利用的变化同时出现在景观上（如森林火灾）；再加上控制水资源时间和供应的广泛的消费和非消费用途，使得管理和了解资源变得困难。正在为CRC提出的建议是推进下一代社区预测框架，该框架将进一步促进新的过程理解、数据同化技术、建模生态系统内的地理空间信息，从而改进决策并支持政策制定和知识动员。这项研究将处理水资源和有关的水文气象和水文气候问题，同时侧重于实现可持续管理。

It is currently well understood that climate change is altering the patterns of rainfall and snow, increasing temperature and impacting ice and permafrost melt, exacerbating existing water availability and quality issues, as well as increasing the frequency of water-related natural hazards. Impacts on water systems impose significant costs on Canadian society and the environment. The most recent examples cited from Public Safety Canada with damages from flooding alone reach about $1 Billion per year over the last several years. The Calgary flood of 2013 is often cited as one of the costliest natural disasters in Canadian history. By contrast, the drought on the Canadian prairies from 2001 to 2003 can also be considered equivalent. Canadian organizations, provinces, territories, institutions, water resources professionals and citizens themselves are ill-prepared to manage the new water-related risks. Successful adaptation to the coming realities requires public buy-in to the science of climate change; and the need to implement adaptation policies while reacting effectively to risk while remaining informed. Water is a local variable resource, and vulnerability to climate-related hazards such as the impacts from flooding and drought differs from one region to another. This vulnerability to hazards also stems from the failure of institutions to adequately prepare for and manage existing and evolving risks. In that regard, the province of Alberta and all the other provinces in Canada face special challenges, because of their large landmasses, diverse geography, cold-regions considerations and wide ranges of climate and hydrological regimes. Climate-induced change both in the atmosphere; and as they manifest on the landscape (e.g., forest fires) in parallel with changes in land use; and coupled with a broad range of consumptive and non-consumptive uses that control the timing and supply of water resources make managing and understanding the resource difficult. What is being proposed for the CRC is to advance the next generation of a community prediction framework that furthers new process understanding, data assimilation techniques, geo-spatial information within a modelling ecosystem that will allow for improved decision making and will support policy development and knowledge mobilization. The research will address water resources and related hydro-meteorological and hydro-climatic problems while focused on enabling sustainable management.