Author(s): Michael Butts, Roar Jensen, Jacob Larsen, Henrik Mueller, Bertrand Richaud, Peter Larsen, Miguel Angel Corcuera Barrera, Basel Draw, Alejandro E. Lasarte
Linked Author(s): Michael Brian Butts
Keywords: Climate variability, forecasting, climate adaptation, water resources management, reservoir operation
Abstract: Seasonal forecasting has the potential to impact decision making in many water-related sectors such as energy, agriculture and water supply. Typical applications include, long-term contingency planning for floods and droughts, water demands and allocation for irrigation or domestic/industrial water use, energy production forecasting, environmental monitoring and climate adaptation. Hydrological seasonal forecasts over periods of weeks to months are particularly useful for water resources management where future flows depend on storages such as snow accumulation or man-made reservoirs. Despite its potential value both in terms of economics and for climate adaptation, seasonal forecast information is currently under-exploited. There are two reasons which are often cited for this. The first is the relatively large scale at which seasonal meteorological forecasts are provided, whereas water resources or reservoir managers operate at much smaller scales. Therefore, the effective downscaling approaches are required for operational forecasting. The second challenge is the perception that the seasonal forecasts are highly uncertain and unreliable. Ensemble seasonal forecasts from the latest generation of climate-ocean models address both the need to quantify the forecast uncertainties and improve reliability. Nevertheless, recent work suggests that the performance of both meteorological and hydrological seasonal forecasting at smaller scales must be evaluated separately in each case. In order to effectively use seasonal forecasts to improve decision-making, there is a strong need for decision support tools that provide seasonal forecasting information in a useful and intuitive manner. In this study, we describe the development of a generic decision support system for reservoir inflow and operations to address these challenges. We investigate the different contributions to seasonal forecast accuracy using two case studies in Spain and Chile
Year: 2017