Grantee Research Project Results
2011 Progress Report: US Freshwater Resources in the Coming Decades: An Integrated Climate-hydrologic Modeling Study
EPA Grant Number: R834190Title: US Freshwater Resources in the Coming Decades: An Integrated Climate-hydrologic Modeling Study
Investigators: Reinfelder, Ying Fan , Robinson, David A. , Miller, James R.
Current Investigators: Reinfelder, Ying Fan
Institution: Rutgers
EPA Project Officer: Packard, Benjamin H
Project Period: August 1, 2009 through July 31, 2012 (Extended to July 31, 2014)
Project Period Covered by this Report: August 1, 2010 through July 31,2011
Project Amount: $769,065
RFA: Consequences of Global Change for Water Quality (2008) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Ecological Indicators/Assessment/Restoration , Climate Change , Watersheds , Aquatic Ecosystems , Water
Objective:
To reconstruct the past 32 years (1979-2010) of hydrologic change in North America and to project coupled climate-hydrologic changes in the next 50 years under IPCC scenarios.
Progress Summary:
During the second year of the project, we have (a) conducted several 10-year long simulations to diagnose model problems and implement new processes and improvements such as the new age-dependent snow albedo model and a new frozen-soil permeability parameterization; (b) implemented a new river and floodplain routing scheme by incorporating the diffusion and the acceleration terms in the momentum equation of open channel hydraulics, which takes into account back-water effects that cause flooding in lowland valleys and coastal areas; (c) completed the compilation of observed streamflow at 78 gages, 813 groundwater monitoring wells, soil moisture at 132 sites, and daily snow extent, which will be used to validate the 32-year retro-land hydrology simulations using LEAF-Hydro-Flood; and (d) obtained additional computation resources from NCAR climate simulation lab to use NCAR supercomputers.
Future Activities:
During the next year of the project, we will (a) complete the 32-year retro-simulation of North America land hydrology with human withdraws using LEAF-Hydro-Flood, which is Task 1 of the project; (b) complete the 10-year retro-simulation of coupled climate-hydrology using WRF-Hydro, which is task 2 of the project; and (c) include human withdraw in the modeling framework; and (d) explore a simple energy model to simulate stream temperature. During the third and final year of the project, we will perform multiple 10-year coupled simulations using WRF-Hydro with boundary conditions provided by the various IPCC climate projections, to assess likely future changes in land hydrologic stores (groundwater, soil moisture, river flow and wetland distribution), fluxes (rainfall, evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, and stream flow) and stream temperature under climate change and expansion of human footprints on land hydrology, over the period of 2050-2060 and 2090-2100.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 13 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
Water resources, climate variability, climate change, irrigation withdraw, land hydrology, stream flow, groundwater, soil moisture, wetlands, stream temperature, LEAF, WRF, downscaling, RFA, Scientific Discipline, Air, Hydrology, climate change, Air Pollution Effects, Environmental MonitoringRelevant Websites:
We plan to set up a project webpage as soon as Task 1 is complete and we have results to post.
- Ying Fan Reinfelder, Associate Professor, http://geology.rutgers.edu/people/19-people/faculty/244-ying-fan-reinfelder Exit
- Haibin Li, Postdoctoral Research Associate, http://geology.rutgers.edu/people/annuals-and-adjuncts/23-people/annuals-and-adjuncts/260-haibin-li Exit
- Deniz Kustu, graduate student
- The NCAR climate simulation lab websites list the current project as a grantee of large computation resources
- The Rutgers University Global Snow Lab under co-PI David Robinson (used for model validation): http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/ Exit
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.