UW Civil and Environmental Engineering Connecting climate, hydrologic and drought predictions to water resource management in Washington State Andy Wood, Shraddhanand Shukla, Julie Vano, and Anne C. Steinemann Project Overview Hydrologic Assessment and Prediction Activities For Washington State, a real-time model-based hydrologic monitoring and prediction system now offers: http://www.hydro.washington.edu/forecast/sarp/ State-of-the-art climate forecasts such as the NOAA CPC medium range and seasonal outlooks offer the potential to improve water management in drought-vulnerable sectors such as agriculture. This study will assess the extent and modes of adoption of NOAA climate prediction products in water resources operations and drought management. We focus on water management (a) in Washington State’s Yakima River Basin, home to the state's most valuable irrigated crops, and (b) on state-level drought policy in Washington. There are three main goals of the project: Collaborate with U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) to evaluate the uses of climate and streamflow forecasts. Interact with water users and managers to identify the factors that influence the degree of adoption of hydrologic forecasts in decision-making. Explore potential uses of model-based monitoring and prediction of hydrologic indicators of drought as triggers for management actions. spatial maps of soil moisture and SWE basin average moisture conditions for “water resources inventory areas” (WRIAs) current drought index values and their recent time evolution The USBR Yakima (reservoir) Project supports approximately 464,000 irrigated acres, as well as hydropower, recreation and fisheries needs. the system can stage both traditional (e.g., PDSI) and experimental indices note, recent flood disaster for western WA declared User Interactions CPC outlook-based hydrologic outlooks for the state & basin (under evaluation) Interaction with USBR operators and water users focuses on identifying potential matches of decision information needs with existing climate prediction products Analysis of model-based indices of drought for past drought events CPC outlook Example: Oct 1 forecast for October (lead 0.5) climate and hydrologic variables (below) based on Sep. 20 CPC seasonal outlook (right). CPC medium range forecasts for: snowmelt prediction in spring For example, just prior to drought declaration in March 2001… spawning flow setting in November Precipitation Temperature Soil Moisture flood control, late fall, winter week-to-week delivery operations in summer SWE SWE SWE Soil Moisture Runoff Outlook skill for Yakima R. basin CPC seasonal outlooks for: observed observed Ongoing Work helping to determine Total Water Supply Available (TWSA) for allocations in spring growers’ decisions in winter Precipitation 28% 30% 22% 20% AN BN AN BN Assess and discuss skill of seasonal outlook and medium range CPC climate forecast products with USBR and water users in Yakima R. basin Identify avenues for increasing quantitative use of CPC climate forecasts in decisionmaking by water managers and users. Develop state-wide model-based drought indices that are informed by CPC climate products, and identify potential linkages to state-level drought management. Funding has been provided by the NOAA Sector Applications Research Program (SARP). AN BN AN BN 69% 19% forecast forecast Product Assessment 10% 2% Temperature Directional Skill: % of time forecast tendency in "right" direction? Above Normal (AN) or Below Normal (BN) CPC Seasonal Forecast Climate Division 74, lead time 0.5 month, 1995-2006 setting spawning flows in November. Acknowledgements