Sharpening Drought Plans for Climate Change

SEI has established collaboration with the El Dorado Irrigation District, a water purveyor on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to investigate the potential impacts of climate change on a water system that depends to a large degree on the accumulation of snow at high elevation during the winter and the progressive melting of this snow during the late spring and early summer.

A WEAP application of the system has already been developed in order to test drought management triggers and actions that were defined by the district assuming that historic hydrologic patterns will be representative of future conditions.

Climate change calls this assumption into question. This project will attempt to help introduce notions of uncertainty and risk management into the definition of drought plan triggers and actions adopted by the district, as well as other long-term actions being contemplated by the district.

Funder: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Partners: University of California, Berkeley, National Center for Atmospheric Research