Climatic Change and Ensuing Risks Facing Water Resources Managers

by Nathan Buras, Univ of Arizona, Tucson, United States,



Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Risk-Based Decision Making in Water Resources V

Abstract:

Global climatic changes will have a significant effect on the utilization of regional water resources and will influence markedly the operation and management of water storage and delivery systems. As the primary climatic variables - precipitation and temperature - and their temporal and spacial distributions will be substantially affected by increased concentrations of CO₂ and other gases released into the atmosphere, water resources managers will face risks different in severity from the situations where the assumption of stationarity of distributions of streamflows is tenable. Starting from the basic definition of risk, risk = hazard/safeguards one can identify, in a simple model, the hazards as being increased water scarcity faced by greater water demand, and the safeguards as being the available storage facilities in a region.

Subject Headings: Water storage | Water resources | Water management | Risk management | Water supply systems | Climate change | Water supply | Colorado River

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