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CLIMATE, STREAMFLOW AND WATER SUPPLY IN THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES. (R824992)
Citation:
Vogel, R. M., C. Bell, AND N. M. Fennessey. CLIMATE, STREAMFLOW AND WATER SUPPLY IN THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES. (R824992). JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY. Elsevier Science Ltd, New York, NY, 198(1-4):42-68, (1997).
Description:
Most previous investigations of the impact of potential climatic change on water supply systems have focused on individual systems so that their conclusions only apply to a particular system. Recent advances in computer technology, regional hydrology and our understanding of water supply system behavior allow for examination of the sensitivity of water supply system behavior to potential climatic change in a very general framework. A regional hydroclimatologic model of annual streamflow is developed for the northeastern United States which relates moments of annual streamflow to climatic and geomorphic characteristics at 166 gaging stations. The regional hydroclimatologic streamflow model is then combined with analytic relationships among water supply system storage, reliability, resilience and yield. The sensitivity of various water supply system performance indices such as yield, reliability and resilience are derived as a function of climatic, hydrologic and storage conditions. These results allow us to quantify, in general, the sensitivity of water supply system behavior to changes in the climatologic regime. Case studies for four watersheds in New York and one water supply system in Massachusetts indicate that our simple regional annual modelling approach can reproduce the results of much more detailed site-specific monthly hydroclimatologic modelling approaches.
Index Terms: Water supply systems; Climate change; Stream flow; Hydrology; Watersheds; Climatology; Geomorphology; Computer simulation; Hydroclimatologic model