Climate Change Projections: A User Community Perspective from the Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA)
Abstract
The Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA) is a coalition of eight large water providers from around the United States formed in 2007 to address climate change adaptation challenges faced by water utilities. WUCA members include the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Seattle Public Utilities, Denver Water, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, Portland Water Bureau, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, San Diego County Water Authority, and Southern Nevada Water Authority. As water utilities contemplate hundreds of billions of dollars in renewal and replacement investment in their aging infrastructures in the coming decades, and the implications of these investments for their ratepayers, they now recognize that those decisions must be made in the context of climate change. Yet long- and short- term climate projections currently provide a wide array of potential climate change effects, in some cases contradictory effects, for such factors as temperature, precipitation, and hydrologic variability. One of the WUCA's early objectives, therefore, has been to raise the urgency level within the climate research community as to the need for climate projections that can be incorporated into water management and planning. In particular, WUCA has identified a need for greater investment and research in higher resolution modeling, at the watershed level or finer grid scale, and in improvements in certain model parameters, such as precipitation, on the part of the climate modeling community. For example, in comments to the federal umbrella effort, the Climate Change Science Program, the Alliance has urged improved data gathering and increased modeling investment. Finally, for this and other programs seeking higher level scientific understanding of climate change, WUCA has found that communication between the climate research community and the "user community" must be enhanced from present levels.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008AGUFMGC14A..06B
- Keywords:
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- 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1800 HYDROLOGY;
- 6600 PUBLIC ISSUES;
- 6620 Science policy (0485)