Climate Adaptation: Pragmatic Advances in the Face of Deep Uncertainty (Invited)

Currently, society is ill-prepared for the current and future effects of climate change. In particular, current water management methods are ill-prepared for changing baselines, leaving society exposed to excessive risk. At present, adaptation initiatives are stymied by the uncertainty of future changes and lack of understanding of adaptation benefits in specific cases. Yet, the human consequences of unpreparedness demand action. While significant climate change science effort is directed toward prediction, the information needs for adaptation, such as future hydrologic conditions in the near future at local scales, are largely beyond prediction using current methods. Recently, analysts have achieved significant progress advancing “decision-centric” methods that focus research on the dynamics of the system of interest in response to plausible climate changes. This presentation will introduce decision-centric methodologies in applications to multi-purpose water allocation and water infrastructure design. Specific aspects include, simulation modeling of human-hydrologic systems, assessment of the effectiveness of adaptation measures, and climate informed risk assessment and identification of credible signals of change for the specific sources of risk affecting a system. Together, these research objectives comprise an effort to provide a scientific basis for sound water management decisions in the face of deep uncertainty.