Climate Forecast-Aided Drought Decision Support for North Central Texas

Drought poses a large challenge for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (DFW) and North Central Texas where water supply is pressured by rapid population growth, urbanization and climate change. To meet the growing demand, large raw water suppliers such as the Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD) operate systems of reservoirs that are often interconnected by extensive networks of pipelines. The purpose of this work is to improve the operation of the reservoir-pipeline systems in North Central Texas in times of hydrologic extremes by integrating the NOAA-produced ensemble forecasts at weather and climate scales and other climate forecast information within a risk-based decision-making framework. The value of these forecasts is demonstrated through hindcasting and verification. The hindcasting experiments use weather and climate reforecasts from the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) and the Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2). Hydrologic ensemble hindcasts are produced using the Hydrologic Ensemble Forecast Service (HEFS) of the NWS National Water Center (NWC) which are then input to the reservoir operation tool, RiverWare, used by TRWD. In this presentation, we describe the hindcasting experiments and share the initial results.