Spatial Analysis of Future Climate Risk to Stormwater Infrastructure
Citation:
Butcher, J., S. Sarkar, T. Johnson, AND A. Shabani. Spatial Analysis of Future Climate Risk to Stormwater Infrastructure. JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN WATER RESOURCES ASSOCIATION. American Water Resources Association, Middleburg, VA, , 1-14, (2023). https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.13132
Impact/Purpose:
This product is a national scale, screening assessment of the potential effects of hydroclimatic change on stormwater runoff and BMP sizing in different regions of the U.S. Results can help inform climate change adaptation planning for reducing the anticipated impacts of climate change on stormwater runoff and quality.
Description:
Climate change is expected to result in more intense precipitation events that will affect the performance and design requirements of stormwater infrastructure. Such changes will vary spatially, and climate models provide a range of estimates of the effects on events of different intensities and recurrence frequencies. Infrastructure performance should be evaluated against the expected range of events, not just rare extremes. We present a national-scale, spatially detailed screening assessment of the potential effects of hydroclimatic change on precipitation, stormwater runoff, and potential effects on management practice sizing requirements. This is accomplished through climate adjustment relative to multiple future climate model scenarios of the rainfall intensity-duration-frequency analyses presented in NOAA Atlas 14, which are used in infrastructure design in many jurisdictions. Future precipitation results are estimated for each Atlas 14 station (these currently do not include the Pacific Northwest). Results are interpolated using a geographically conditioned regression kriging approach and provide information about potential climate change impacts in a format more directly useful to local stormwater infrastructure design.
