Effects of climate change on water resources

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 19:00:00 -0500

Advancing understanding of climate change effects on California water resources requires improved representation of surface and groundwater movement in regional climate models. Alison Whipple, a first-year graduate student in hydrology and trainee in the CCWAS IGERT, used parameters from the Cosumnes River basin with global climate model output in PF.WRF -- currently the only model that fully couples regional hydrologic and climate processes – for a "proof of concept" exploration of how atmosphere, land surface, and groundwater interact to affect water availability. Her preliminary research illustrated important effects of connections between climate and hydrology, and therefore supports further investigation with an ultimate goal of predicting water movement in the watershed under different climate and management scenarios.