Vulnerability and risk: climate change and water supply from California’s Central Valley water system

Patrick Ray (), Sungwook Wi, Andrew Schwarz, Matthew Correa, Minxue He and Casey Brown
Additional contact information
Patrick Ray: University of Cincinnati
Sungwook Wi: University of Massachusetts
Andrew Schwarz: Delta Stewardship Council
Matthew Correa: California Department of Water Resources
Minxue He: California Department of Water Resources
Casey Brown: University of Massachusetts

Climatic Change, 2020, vol. 161, issue 1, No 11, 177-199

Abstract: Abstract Water allocation institutions globally must operate within legal and political contexts established by precedent and codified in operating rules, even as they flex and adjust to climate change. California’s Central Valley Water System (CVS) is a prime example. Recent global, national, regional, and local climate change assessments have highlighted climate-change-driven impacts on the CVS; however, these previous studies have not discussed the relative likelihood of performance decline, making it difficult to use the information for planning. In response, this paper presents a systematic climate change stress test that utilizes a physically based hydrologic model linked with a water resources system model representing the infrastructure, operations, and policy constraints of the interconnected system of natural river channels and man-made facilities that comprise the CVS. The results provide a summary of the sensitivity of the system to climate change, indicating the specific climate changes that cause performance of the system to decline below historical norms, and an estimation of the General Circulation Model (GCM) informed probability of those changes by 2050. Degraded performance is especially likely for State Water Project (SWP) deliveries (> 85%), and September carryover/drought storage in the Oroville Reservoir (the SWP’s largest reservoir, ~ 95% likely to degrade). A decline in Net Delta Outflow is likely in all seasons except summer and early fall (when regulations require supplemental releases to combat salinity from sea level rise). For most of these metrics, the modeled performance drop is more severe in dry years than in wet years.

Keywords: California Central Valley; Climate change; Water year type; Hydrologic model; Decision scaling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10584-020-02655-z

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