Identification

Title

Incorporating multiyear temperature predictions for water resources planning

Abstract

Multiyear climate predictions provide climate outlooks from years to a decade in advance. As multiyear temperature predictions become more mainstream and skillful, guidance is needed to assist practitioners who wish to explore this maturing field. This paper demonstrates the process and considerations of incorporating multiyear temperature predictions into water resources planning. Multiyear temperature predictions from the Community Earth System Model Decadal Prediction Large Ensemble are presented as discrete and probabilistic products and are used to force two common hydrologic modeling approaches: conceptual and empirical. The approaches are demonstrated to simulate streamflow in the upper Colorado River basin watershed in Colorado, where diagnostics show that increasing temperatures are associated with decreasing streamflows. Using temperature information for lead years 2-6, two analyses are performed: (i) a retrospective hindcast for the climatological period (1981-2010) and (ii) a blind forecast for 2011-15. For the retrospective hindcast, including temperature information improved the percent error as compared with climatology. For the blind forecast, the multiyear temperature prediction for warming was skillful, but the corresponding multiyear average streamflow predictions from both approaches were counterintuitive: with the predicted warming, the multiyear average streamflow was predicted to be lower than the climatological mean; however, the observed multiyear average streamflow was higher than the climatological mean. This was due to above-average precipitation during the prediction time frame, particularly for one of the years. With that year removed, the multiyear streamflow average became lower than the climatological mean. Temperature provides a marginal source of streamflow predictability, but there will be substantial uncertainty until prediction skill for year-to-year climate variability, especially for precipitation, increases.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d76d5xdk

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2021-02-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact