- Title
- Projecting impacts of climate change on future water resources: how and what to change?
- Creator
- Herron, Andrew; Kiem, Anthony S.; Peel, Murray C.
- Relation
- Practical Responses to Climate Change National Conference 2010: Meeting the Challenges from Catchment to Coast. Proceedings of Practical Responses to Climate Change Conference 2010: Meeting the Challenges from Catchment to Coast (Melbourne 29 September - 1 October, 2010)
- Relation
- http://www.climatechange2010.org
- Publisher
- ICMS / Engineers Australia
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2010
- Description
- When projecting impacts of climate change on future water resources (e.g. rainfall, streamflow) decisions need to be made about how and what historical statistics should change. For example, to create a precipitation sequence that is representative of a “future climate” a scaling methodology is commonly adopted. The percentage change in mean between the current climate and a future climate, as projected by a climate model or ensemble of climate models, is applied as a “change factor” to the historical data. An assumption of this methodology is that the historical standard deviation is altered by the same percentage as the mean, while the coefficient of variation is maintained – but is this appropriate? The standard deviation could change in various ways, including, by the same percentage as the mean (as described above), no change at all or change by an amount that is different to the change in mean. Other statistical properties such as range and skew could also change as if for example there was an increase in extremely wet and extremely dry months. This could result in minimal change to monthly means but the standard deviation, range and other statistics would change considerably. This paper summarises results from a recent consulting project (SKM, 2009) which involved the stochastic generation of future climate (i.e. rainfall and evaporation) scenarios for input into models used to determine optimal management of water resources in the Canberra and Murrumbidgee regions. Key questions around which statistics should be preserved are investigated. Also discussed are the limitations associated with the current “application of a change factor” approach, some alternate approaches, and the implications for wider hydrological application.
- Subject
- climate change; climate modelling; climate statistics; water resources; rainfall
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/935736
- Identifier
- uon:12126
- Language
- eng
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