McDonald

Project Summary

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Himalayan rivers originating from High Mountain Asia (HMA) are the lifelines for more than a billion people living downstream. The snow and glacier fed rivers provide the basis for food and energy production and support the diverse ecosystems. Climate-mediated changes in melting of snow and glaciers and in precipitation patterns are expected to significantly alter the flow of the rivers in the HMA region at various temporal scales, which in turn could heavily affect the socioeconomics of the region. Because the economic contribution of a river depends on the volume of flow, changes in seasonal and long-term hydrological conditions due to climate change would have far reaching economic impact annually and over the century. We will develop, demonstrate and implement a version of decision support tool utilizing integration of interdisciplinary models and remote sensing datasets to inform water resource management decisions and ecosystem sustainability as related to the High Mountain Asia (HMA) region’s response to a changing climate regime. An integrated assessment framework that couples process-based models with econometric models will be will be combined with remotely-sensed and field-based datasets on freeze/thaw transitions, snow cover and glacier area observations to assess the impacts of future climate change on basin-wide river runoff and how that translates to hydropower generation and water allocation in Himalayan watersheds. The societal benefits of using remote sensing observations to manage water resources and develop policies for the growing economies of HMA nations will be significant. This effort will lay a foundation for estimating societal benefits of using NASA datasets for documenting climate change led impacts on high mountains and using that information in managing water resources. As part of previous work, Argonne National Laboratory oversaw the Generation and Transmission Maximization (GTMax) model and development of the Water Use Optimization Toolset (WUOT), and has successfully implemented GTMax domestically and internationally in concurrence with the mission of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) to address energy and environmental challenges. For this project, we will integrate aspects of the GTMax and WUOT with NASA’s Glacier Melt Tool Box (GMELT) using an integrated assessment framework in order to identify ways to maximize the value of water use. The results will improve scientific understanding of the impact of future climate change on snow and glacier melt of HMA on river runoff and how that translates to economic value from energy production and downstream ecosystem sustainability in the HMA region. The information generated from this work will be useful to scientific communities as well as the water resource managers and decision makers in HMA region. Our Glacial Modeling (GM) team will utilize remote sensing data of snow cover and freeze/thaw state, combined with field data to construct a dynamic snow and glacier melt model for river basin level. We will employ the high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model to predict radiation, temperature and precipitation at river basin level and modify GTMax and WUOT accordingly to estimate snow and glacier melt at river basin level. We will employ hydrologic, power system, irrigation production, and biodiversity datasets to support development of economic valuation and optimization models. We will employ inflow forecast modeling to estimate spatio-temporal impacts of snow and glaciers on river runoff. We will evaluate the potential impact of changes in seasonal and annual flow patterns on electricity generation and river functionality, and the suitability of the flow patterns for achieving objectives related to maintenance of ecological diversity, agricultural needs, and fisheries. We will assess uncertainties throughout our analyses, estimate the change in net present value of benefits under climate-change scenarios.