Sensitivity of California River Flows to Schematic Climate Changes

Water supply in California is vulnerable to changing climate conditions, especially under global warming scenarios. Increasing human demand for water exacerbates this problem. This presentation illustrates how climate changes could affect California's water supply through a series of sensitivity studies. We performed a series of hydrological simulations over California using a number of hypothetical meteorological forcing data sets. Those data sets were created by modifying the historical meteorological data and those generated from high-resolution climate models to imitate different climate change scenarios. Different warming levels and precipitation amounts were played out to understand the effects of climate change on snow volume, seasonal timing of river flows, peak flow rates and frequency/intensity of droughts. This study is part of the ongoing climate and water research initiative in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to use high-resolution global and regional climate models and surface hydrology models to provide water managers with projections of the effects of climate change and variability on California hydrological cycle.