Utilities and Climate Scientists Team Up to Prepare for Bleak Water Future

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Utilities and Climate Scientists Team Up to Prepare for Bleak Water Future

Alliance is helping U.S. water utilities integrate climate models into long-term planning to better adapt their operations to global warming

By Lisa Song, SolveClimate News
Aug 19, 2011

Ten of the nation's largest water utilities have teamed up to connect climate scientists and water providers so utilities will have the information they need to prepare for the harmful effects of global warming.

Climate change will create a host of challenges that affect water supply, water quality, stormwater drainage and flood control. Utilities on the coast may need to prepare for rising sea levels. Utilities in the Southwest could face more intense droughts.

But there's a gap between most climate research and the kind of information that utilities need. Current climate models tend to work best with long-term trends and over large geographic areas. Water utilities, on the other hand, need specific information about how their water supplies and local rainfall patterns will be disrupted before they risk investing their customers' money in new infrastructure.

"It's inherently difficult for water utilities to make heads or tails of how they're going to be affected by climate change," said http://www.isse.ucar.edu/staff/miller/">Kathleen Miller, a scientist at the http://ncar.ucar.edu/">National Center for Atmospheric Research. "When you zoom in on a particular locality, the scale of global models isn't able to tell you exactly what's going to happen."

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