Share icon
Description Aniuk Consulting, LLC proposes to investigate the feasibility of creating a series of future (decade-to-century) snow related products derived from climate scenarios obtained from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Primary products will include: gridded maps of various snow products for multiple time resolutions out to the year 2100. Products will also include depictions of potential changes in the timing and amount of snowmelt runoff. Objectives: a. Deliver improved snow related products that depict potential changes in water supply decades to a century into the future at multiple temporal resolutions. b. Improve interoperability between climate change products and hydrologic models to assist water resources managers with investigating the potential impacts of climate change on water supply allocation and dam and hydroelectric operations. This project relates to the climate change and water resources priority topics identified by the Applied Science Program within the NASA Earth Science Division. It will use NASA?s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) climate models and MODIS snow products. Methods We propose to statistically downscale the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) climate model A1 and B2 climate scenarios of temperature and precipitation and apply the downscaled values to create gridded predictions of snowpack conditions using remote sensing and mathematical techniques. These grids can be used as input into hydrologic models to forecast water supply and, thus, enable the investigation of potential impacts of climate change on reservoir operations. Significance An understanding of future water availability in the United States, particularly in the arid regions, based on a suite of climate change projections will allow policy makers to better anticipate upcoming water issues, such as the better allocation and management of water supply. Through understanding of how timing and magnitude of water resources will change, reservoir operators will be able to improve procedures and regulations.