WaterWired

John H. Matthews' Thursday Twofer Treat: 1) Award-Winning CRIDA Article: 2) University of Idaho FREE CRIDA Workshop

1) Award-Winning CRIDA Article

I last wrote about John H. Matthews' article on 5 December 2018:

John H. Matthews, a good friend and one of the smartest water-climate guys in the room, is the lead and co- founder of the dynamic organization Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA). In just a few short years John and AGWA have catapulted themselves to the climate and water A-list. His success is well-deserved. 

One of the many nice things about John is that all his fame has not gone to his head and he still talks to me. He'll even write a brief article for a special issue of Water Resources IMPACTI edited, Climate Change: Resilient Infrastructure or Infrastructure for Resilience?. He begins the article as few people can - by recounting an invitation he received to an informal dinner in Europe with investors and their ilk. What happened there? Read on, gentle reader....

Download Matthews

Don't forget to check out Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA).

So why am I repeating the above here? Perhaps trying to curry favor with Dr. Matthews? Or fearful that he might drop me from his cellphone contact list?

None of those is true. John's article, Climate Change: Resilient Infrastructure or Infrastructure for Resilience?, has recently been awarded the Water Resources IMPACT best article for 2018. It's the first time we have made such an award. I love the way John starts his article:

Recently I was invited to an informal dinner in Europe withnvestors and groups that interact with investors. I’m a freshwater scientist, working on climate change and water management issues for about 15 years. I had been seated across from a smartly dressed woman from southern Africa, affiliated with a group funded by British foreign aid to support resilient infrastructure in the region.

I was intrigued. Infrastructure is especially exposed to climate change risks. By its nature, infrastructure lasts a long time, but we typically evaluate success/failure and “sustainability” over much shorter periods. Worse, our ability to predict future impacts in a shifting climate with confidence and certainty is limited—especially for investments that interact with the water cycle, that require a quantitative evaluation framework such as engineering or economics, or that have low tolerance for failure. Climate models provide limited and often weak confidence and conflicting projections about conditions 10 years from now, much less 50 or 100. Worldwide, we see many pieces of twentieth-century infrastructure in cities, along rivers and on shorelines that no longer match their climate conditions. Some, like the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams in the United States, require billions in retrofitting or demand adjustments in order to maintain their fit with current and emerging patterns.

  Read it all:

Download MatthewsArticleOfYearNov2018IMPACT

Here is a presentation John gave here at OSU in January 2019:

Download 2019_i_18_osu_matthews_climate

 2) Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIIDA) Workshop - University of Idaho, 22-23 April 2019

Mary Engels, a PhD student at the University, just sent me information about a workshop John is consucting at UI. There are some spots still available. Please register by 17 April. Click here. The workshop fee and a light breakfast and lunch are provided free of charge; attendees must cover dinner, travel, and lodging. Want more information? Contact Mary Engels: enge5729@vandals.uidaho.edu

Enjoy!

"We build things that last 300 years. Why don't we think about sustainability for that long?" - Senior manager, The World Bank, February 2017 (thanks to John H. Matthews)

CRS In Focus Report: Reclamation Water Storage Projects - Section 4007 of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act

Brief two-page CRS In Focus report from Charles V. Stern: Reclamation Water Storage Projects: Section 4007 of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (updated 2 April 2019). 

Download CRS_InFocus_USBR_3April2019

Introduction
Section 4007 of the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act (WIIN Act; P.L. 114-322), enacted in December 2016, created a new authority for the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation, part of the Department of the Interior) to build water storage projects in the western United States. Reclamation has used this authority to further progress on a number of water storage projects. From FY2017 to FY2019, Congress appropriated the full $335 million in available budget authority for these projects. A portion of these funds has been allocated at the project level by Reclamation.

Some federal and state decisionmakers, local stakeholders, and advocacy groups are interested in extending the authority to make additional headway on water storage projects in the West. Others oppose federal funding for new water storage projects, in particular those to be located in environmentally sensitive areas. This In Focus discusses the Section 4007 authority and its status.

Background
In the early and mid-20th century, Reclamation built hundreds of large dams and water diversion structures throughout the West. Traditionally, Reclamation’s role inwater project development has been limited to geographically specific projects authorized in federal statute. Typically, the federal government, through discretionary appropriations to Reclamation, has provided full, up-front funding for the construction costs of these facilities. Project beneficiaries, which are irrigators, municipal water suppliers, and hydropower contractors, repay their portion of project construction or development costs over a 40-50 year term. The amount recouped by the federal government typically depends on several factors, including the portion of project benefits that are nonreimbursable because they are considered federal in nature (e.g., fish and wildlife enhancements, flood control, recreation), as well as adjustments for irrigation contractors’ ability to pay. Additionally, irrigation beneficiaries are not charged interest on their repayment obligations. As a result, the total amount repaid to the federal government for these projects is typically less than the full cost of construction.

I

Wonder how much Reclamation is invested in managed aquifer recharge as a means to store water? Not much.

Enjoy!

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan (quoted in @sunjournal via @TheWeek)

Our Presentation at UNL: 'Harvesting Glacial Meltwater and Early Snowmelt with Managed Aquifer Recharge'

By yours truly and the groundwatergeek, Maria T. Gibson - presented by me at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln on 28 March 2019. Wonderful hospitality from water guru Dr. Dan Snow, Director of the Water Sciences Laboratory.

Download Campana_Abstract_UNL_Seminar_v2 

PPT: Download Campana_UNL_28March2019_v3

PDF: Download Campana_UNL_28March2019_v3
(updated 8 April 2019)

Abstract

In response to global warming, some mountain glaciers are melting at accelerated rates. This is not unique to exotic locales such as the Andes and Himalayas; some permanent glaciers in North America are shrinking and are en routeto extinction. In the USA the best example of this phenomenon is Glacier National Park in Montana, which could be glacier-free by the middle of this century. In western Oregon and Washington some of the highest elevations in the Cascade Range are losing permanent glaciers. In addition, early snowmelt in the Cascades and elsewhere has the potential for harvesting.

         Glaciers and snowpack provide humanity and natural ecosystems with 'free storage' of freshwater and parcel out water to maintain and replenish freshwater supplies. During the warm season, glacial meltwater nourishes lower elevation ecosystems and human settlements and recharges aquifers. Replenishment of the glacier normally occurs during the cooler seasons; the cycle then repeats itself. Ideally, one would like a balance: the glacial ice melting in the summer would be replaced by cold weather precipitation. When the melting exceeds the replenishment, the equilibrium is destroyed. The volume of the glacier shrinks, and if the disequilibrium continues, the glacier will disappear entirely.

         Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) could capture 'excess' meltwater – the amount coming out of storage that is available – before the glacier disappears altogether. Early snowmelt could also be captured. Such groundwater storage would not be a permanent, sustainable solution to freshwater shortages, but might provide time to permit the development of alternatives to ensure survival of ecosystems and humans.

         The presentation will: 1) explore some of the advantages and disadvantages of subsurface storage to salvage glacial meltwater and early snowmelt; 2) speculate where such schemes might work and would be needed; and 3) discuss a recent MAR project in the Yakima River basin in Washington, USA.

Enjoy!

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." - Goethe (thanks to Tony Willardson)

Western North American Glacial Mass Changes: Going, Going, and Still Going. Time to Consider Storage Options

Just five days ago I posted a paper that addressed the loss of glacial mass in South America. I learned of those losses in a Scientific American article which also described glacial losses in western North American glaciers published in Geophysial Research Letters. The latter paper was not available at that time but it is now: Heterogeneous Changes in Western North American Glaciers Linked to Decadal Variability in Zonal Wind Strength by B. Menounos, R. Hugonnet, D. Shean, A. Gardner, I. Howat, E. Berthier, B. Pelto, C. Tennant, J. Shea, Myoung‐Jong Noh, F. Brun, and A. Dehecq

Here are the summaries, introduction, and the last section on discussion and implications. If the links do not work, go to the online version of the paper here. 

Summary
Western North American (WNA) glaciers outside of Alaska cover 14,384 km² of mountainous terrain. No comprehensive analysis of recent mass change exists for this region. We generated over 15,000 multisensor digital elevation models from spaceborne optical imagery to provide an assessment of mass change for WNA over the period 2000–2018. These glaciers lost 117 ± 42 gigatons (Gt) of mass, which accounts for up to 0.32 ± 0.11 mm of sea level rise over the full period of study. We observe a fourfold increase in mass loss rates between 2000–2009 [−2.9 ± 3.1 Gt yr⁻¹] and 2009–2018 [−12.3 ± 4.6 Gt yr⁻¹], and we attribute this change to a shift in regional meteorological conditions driven by the location and strength of upper level zonal wind. Our results document decadal‐scale climate variability over WNA that will likely modulate glacier mass change in the future.

Plain Language Summary
Glaciers in western North America provide important thermal and flow buffering to streams when seasonal snowpack is depleted. We used spaceborne optical satellite imagery to produce thousands of digital elevation models to assess recent mass loss for glaciers in western North America outside of Alaska. Our analysis shows that glacier loss over the period 2009–2018 increased fourfold relative to the period 2000–2009. This mass change over the last 18 years is partly explained by changes in atmospheric circulation. Our results can be used for future modeling studies to understand the fate of glaciers under future climate change scenarios.

 

Introduction
Anthropogenic warming is expected to drive continued mass loss from alpine glaciers throughout the remainder of this century (Marzeion et al., 2017). Relative to other alpine environments, glaciers in western North America (WNA) are expected to play a minor role in future sea level rise (Levermann et al., 2013; Marzeion et al., 2018; Radić et al., 2014) given their small, cumulative volume (Huss & Farinotti, 2012). These ice masses, however, represent important freshwater reservoirs that provide late‐summer meltwater runoff when seasonal snowpacks have been depleted (Frans et al., 2018; Moore et al., 2009) or during years characterized by drought (Jost et al., 2012). Water managers require up‐to‐date assessments of how these ice masses have and will likely change in the coming decades.

A global assessment of glacier mass change by Gardner et al. (2013) included an estimate of WNA glacier mass loss of 14 ± 3 Gt yr⁻¹ for the period 2003–2009 based on the extrapolation of sparse in situ surface mass balance (SMB) measurements (Cogley, 2009). Other approaches to estimate glacier mass change, such as satellite laser altimetry and satellite gravimetry employed by Gardner et al. (2013) for other glacierized regions, have so far proven unsuccessful for WNA due to sparse repeat‐track spacing at lower latitudes and challenges associated with deconvolving competing mass change signals (groundwater, seasonal snow, reservoir volumes and glacio‐isostatic adjustment). Such methods perform particularly poorly for lower‐latitude mountain ranges with disperse glacier coverage, such as those that characterize WNA (Gardner et al., 2013; Jacob et al., 2012).

Repeat mapping of surface elevation through stereophotogrammetry provides an additional approach to measure glacier thickness change on a regional scale that can circumvent spatial and temporal biases imposed by using SMB observations to estimate regional mass change. Geodetic surveys exist for many glacierized regions of WNA (e.g., Basagic & Fountain, 2011; Schiefer et al., 2007), but no study samples all of these regions in a systematic fashion. Novel methods to infer elevation change from medium resolution satellite imagery (Brun et al., 2017) coupled with automated processing of both medium and very high resolution optical satellite imagery (Noh & Howat, 2017; Shean et al., 2016) provide new opportunities to improve global estimates of glacier mass change.

The primary motivation of our paper is to provide the first, regionally complete estimate of glacier mass change for WNA for the period 2000–2018. We then use these data to (i) quantify the contribution of WNA glaciers to sea level rise over the last 18 years, (ii) determine the reliability and representativeness of existing WNA in situ SMB records, and (iii) assess the climatic drivers that affect mass change at the subregional scale.

Cutting to the chase....

Discussion and Implications
Our study provides a comprehensive assessment of glacier mass change (−6.5 ± 2.3 Gt yr⁻¹) for nearly all glacierized terrain in WNA over the period 2000–2018. Our estimated rate of WNA mass change for the early period (−2.9 ± 3.1 Gt yr⁻¹) is considerably less negative than the rate (−14 ± 3 Gt yr⁻¹) previously reported for the period 2003–2009 (Gardner et al., 2013).

In situ observations of SMB are invaluable given their temporal continuity and value in understanding climatic drivers of mass change (Hodge et al., 1998), but their use may bias regional estimates of mass change (Gardner et al., 2013). Our analysis (supporting information S1) shows that glaciological measurements of mass change are in broad agreement with geodetic estimates at the local scale, but they do not effectively sample large ice masses that dominate the regional signal of mass change from WNA, namely, large icefields in the southern Coast Mountains. Using available SMB measurements for 14 glaciers in WNA (supporting information S1), we calculate an average mass change of −874 ± 100 kg m⁻² yr⁻¹over the period 2000–2017. When multiplied by the total glacierized area of WNA, this value yields an annual mass loss of 13.6 ± 4.3 Gt yr⁻¹, close to the value (14 ± 3 Gt yr⁻¹) calculated by Gardner et al. (2013) using a similar approach. These values are twice as large as those based on our trend analysis. This discrepancy suggests that glaciers chosen for long‐term monitoring programs are losing mass more rapidly than the region as a whole. Our findings accord with a study by Fountain et al. (2009), who concluded that South Cascade Glacier, chosen for long‐term in situ SMB observations, lost three times more mass than glaciers in the north Cascade Mountains (subregion 11 of Table 1).

Cumulative mass loss from WNA glaciers over the period 2000–2018 could potentially account for 0.32 ± 11‐mm global sea level rise equivalent, about 0.6% of observed SLR over the period 1993–2017 (Nerem et al., 2018). Our estimate is an upper limit as it assumes that meltwater from glacier mass loss was directly conveyed to the ocean and not stored in intermediate locations (e.g., proglacial lakes formed over the last 18 years). While surface storage of this water might be small, it could contribute to aquifer recharge (Liljedahl et al., 2017).

One of the most surprising findings of our study is the dipole pattern of mass change between glaciers in the British Columbia central Coast [50–55°N] and the Cascade mountains [42–47°N] of the United States (Figure 1). Positive anomalies in zonal winds (250 hPa) over the Cascade Mountains imply a strengthening and southward shift in the jet stream between the early and late periods that would increase the frequency of mid‐latitude cyclones with attendant increases in precipitation. A change in meteorological conditions that favor changes in glacier mass are clearly revealed in the composite anomaly maps, especially for the central, southern Coast and Cascade glaciers (Figure 3). Glaciers of the southern Coast Mountains descend to lower elevations than those that flank high Cascade volcanoes. The partitioning of precipitation into either rain or snow may also explain why some of the Cascade glaciers gained mass during the recent period while Coast Mountain glaciers continued to experience strong thinning and mass loss. Future work employing surface mass and energy balance modeling at the glacier scale can be used to test this hypothesis.

The spatial distribution of subregional mass change is partly linked to regional changes in atmospheric circulation that affect accumulation and ablation. Others have noted the importance of zonal wind on controlling glacier mass balance (Marshall et al., 2011; Shea & Marshall, 2007), and some studies attribute a decline in zonal wind strength to explain the long‐term (1950–2005) decline in winter snow water equivalent (Luce et al., 2013). In our study, anomalies in zonal wind covary with many of the meteorological fields known to control glacier mass balance, namely, temperature and precipitation. Orographically enhanced precipitation in WNA is also favored when strong zonal flow delivers moist air masses that originate over the Pacific Ocean (Jarosch et al., 2012; Neiman et al., 2008). Regions of weak zonal wind also coincide with lower‐than‐average geopotential height over last 18 years.

It remains uncertain whether mass change observed over the last 18 years is related to natural climate variability known to affect glacier mass balance in WNA (Bitz & Battisti, 1999; Hodge et al., 1998; Moore & Demuth, 2001), stochastic variability, or whether these recent changes are related to anthropogenic climate change. We note no obvious relation between major climate indices and decadal changes in zonal wind strength or pressure at the subregional scale (supporting information S1). Using an ensemble of 25 global climate models, however, Luce et al. (2013) show that under a high emission scenario (RCP8.5), zonal wind (700 hPa) strength significantly decreases over the Cascade and Coast Mountains by the end of this century. Zonal winds weaken most over the central and southern Coast Mountains (50–55°N) but strengthen over southern latitudes of California (Luce et al., 2013). Based on the results of our study, weaker zonal winds would tend to favor stronger mass loss for glaciers in the Cascade and Coast Mountains.

Glaciers in both the CONUS and western Canada are expected to undergo continued mass loss throughout this century, even under moderate emission scenarios (Clarke et al., 2015; Frans et al., 2018; Huss & Hock, 2018). These changes will reduce or eliminate the thermal‐ and flow‐buffering capacity provided by glacier runoff for many watersheds, with implications for downstream ecosystems and water resources. If the last 18 years provide a suitable analogue for the next 30–50 years, future glacier change will be modulated by decadal‐scale climate variability. Like seasonal snow cover, improvement in understanding and forecasting climate variability at decadal time scales will be important to help guide estimates of glacier mass change for water management. Projections of future glacier mass change for both the CONUS (Frans et al., 2018) and western Canada (Clarke et al., 2015), like other regions, depend on well‐distributed observations of glacier area and mass change, and our results can be used to improve modeling efforts that seek to understand the fate of glaciers under future climate scenarios. 

This glacial runoff can contribute to sea-level rise and it also represents water that can be stored underground for use meeting future water needs. The meltwater cannot, and doesn't have to be, stored everywhere there are melting glaciers but in some places it could be. Work to identify these areas should begin now.

Maria Gibson and I have looked at this in the Yakima Basin in Washington State, where the Yakima River is peaking earlier because the snowpack is melting. She identified places where the water could be stored in the subsurface. Here is the preliminary work. This does not include Maria's recent PhD dissertation. 

Several years ago we proposed doing this in Peru but did not get funding to do so. Soon, perhaps.  

Enjoy!

"The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected us to see." - John Tukey, quoted in @FT via @TheWeek

Science Talk '19: Be There or Be Uncommunicative!

 

My new BFF, scientist and science communicator extraordinaire, Steve Sobiezczyk, is one of the movers and shakers (or is it 'shovers and makers'?) of SCIENCE TALK '19

 

Steve, who will be addressing the OSU GEM Seminar on 1 February (public welcomed), sent me this blurb about the conference. 

If you are as passionate about science as I am, then I'd recommend checking out the SCIENCE TALK ’19 conference in Portland on 4-5 April. It's a great venue for you to connect with other science communication professionals. This two-day, hands-on conference has numerous workshops, panels, presentations, and keynote presenters – including YouTube's "Physics Girl," Dianna Cowern and Maryam Zaringhalam (Story Collider/AAAS/500 Women Scientists). Opening remarks will be made by Joe Palca (NPR, Joe's Big Idea). We can't forget facts matter. This event is a good place to learn the best way to present those facts so that others can better appreciate them. I'm planning on going, hope to see you there!

 

The early-bird registration deadline has been extended to 15 February - click here to register.

Here is a travel grant application: Download St2019_travel_grant_application

 

I am planning on attending, too. I have learned the importance of communicating science to all, especially non-scientists, and trying to do better. 

 

Important work these days!

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." - George Bernard Shaw