Overview

View in Google My Maps

As the planet warms, largely due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, other aspects of the climate system are expected to change in kind, including atmospheric circulation, temperature and precipitation. The effects of climate change on the water cycle will change the behavior of many rivers around the world. The Columbia River, whose flow is heavily dependent on seasonal snow melt, is likely to experience significant changes in streamflow timing and possibly total flow volume.

This dataset (often referred to as “RMJOC-II”, or the version 2 projections from the River Management Joint Operating Committee) was created with funding from the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) as part of its Technology and Innovation Program (project BPA TIP304 to the University of Washington and Oregon State University), with additional funding to the University of Washington from the United States Bureau of Reclamation and the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The solicitation for proposals was to develop “[…] a new set of temperature, precipitation, snowpack, and streamflow forecast projections for the entire Columbia River System, based on the new Global Climate Model datasets being published in conjunction with IPCC-5,” where IPCC-5 refers to the global climate model experiments performed in support of the fifth assessment report of the IPCC (2014). The BPA was also interested in the effect of methodological choices in the modeling process and how these choices impact the range of projected future conditions.

Example Applications

Climate Change and the Federal Columbia River Power System: Part II: Reservoir Regulation and Operations – Modeling and Analyses

About the Dataset

This dataset streamflow projections for the Columbia River system based on two statistically downscaled meteorological datasets from CMIP5 Global Climate Model (GCM) projections. Four different hydrologic models were used in the development of the dataset. Three were distinct implementations of the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model and a fourth was an implementation of the Precipitation Runoff Modeling System (PRMS). The simulations include daily time steps for each model for the period 1950-2100 for two different future climate scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) and are projections of future unregulated flows throughout the Columbia River system.

This data was previously housed on a different website (www.hydro.washington.edu/CRCC), which is no longer active. A PDF of the previous site can be found here.

Data

Download the data

Funding

This study was partly funded by the Bonneville Power Administration as part of its Technology and Innovation Program (project BPA TIP304 to the University of Washington and Oregon State University), with additional funding to the University of Washington from the United States Bureau of Reclamation and the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

Citation

Chegwidden, O. S., B. Nijssen, D. E. Rupp, P. W. Mote, 2017: Hydrologic Response of the Columbia River System to Climate Change [Data set]. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.854763

Contact

Matt Rogers,

Reports & References

Columbia River Management Joint Operating Committee, 2018: 2018 Climate Change Study, Part I: Hydroclimate Projections and Analyses. Available online.

Columbia River Management Joint Operating Committee, 2020: 2018 Climate Change Study, Part II: Columbia River Reservoir Regulation and Operations – Modeling and Analyses. Available online.

Chegwidden, O., B. Nijssen, D. Rupp, J.Arnold, M. Clark, J. Hamman, S.-C. Kao, Y. Mao, P. Mote, M. Pan, E. Pytlak, and M. Xiao, 2019: How do modeling decisions affect the spread among hydrologic climate change projections?. Earth’s Future, doi:10.1029/2018EF001047.

Dataset Links