LOCA
Project ID: 7131
Principal Investigator: Kenneth Nowak
Research Topic: Water Operation Models and Decision Support Systems
Funded Fiscal Years:
2017 and
2018
Keywords: None
Research Question
How do portrayals of climate impacts on hydrology from LOCA+VIC differ from previously published methods and data sets, using the suite of evaluation metrics described by Mizukami et al. (2016a)?
How do climate projections downscaled by LOCA compared to alternative methods using the suite of evaluation metrics described by Gutmann et al. (2014)?
Need and Benefit
The LOCA downscaled climate projections have received considerable attention for their purported improved handling of extreme events and for their finer spatial resolution (1/16 degree) as compared with previous downscaled data sets (1/8 degree). Further, the LOCA downscaled data will be used in the 4th National Climate Assessment (NCA4). Accordingly, the release of hydrology projections derived from these data is highly anticipated. The collaborators (including Reclamation) that host the Downscaled CMIP3 and CMIP5 Climate and Hydrology Projections archive are preparing to release the LOCA hydrology data in 2017.
This project serves two very important needs: (1) to conduct an independent check of the data set prior to release and (2) to provide context and comparison to existing, similar data sets. Reclamation as well as the broader water management community will benefit from this analysis as it will help to ensure quality and understanding of the data. A notable difference between the aforementioned archive and other similar data repositories is that all data releases are accompanied by a companion report. This is a valuable service; it does create an urgency to complete the evaluation and documentation so that the data may be released confidently and in a timely manner.
Contributing Partners
Contact the Principal Investigator for information about partners.
Research Products
Please contact research@usbr.gov about research products related to this project.
