An Overview of the Great Lakes Hydroclimate Scenarios Project (GLHSP)

The Great Lakes HydroClimate Scenarios Project is a collaborative project between NOAA-Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) and the University of Notre Dame (UND) which will construct a comprehensive hydro climatological database of for the Great Lakes region.  The basic products produced by the study will include daily time step streamflow data for all streamflow locations with a basin area larger than about 100 km² in the Great Lakes Basin, gridded data sets for key hydrological and meteorological variables, and a web site for serving these data resources to the Great Lakes community.  The database will provide historical data (1916-2015) and future projections based on downscaled CMIP5 climate model projections.  The information is intended to support climate change vulnerability assessment and adaptation in the Great Lakes community for water supply, Great Lakes water levels, flood control, hydropower production, transportation, and ecosystem impacts. Future projections, which are based on three years of hydrologic model development at UND, will use statistical downscaling (Hybrid-Delta) to downscale GCM simulations for two emission scenarios (RCP8.5 and RCP4.5) and three future time periods (2020s, 2050s, and 2080s).  These data will be used to drive a macroscale hydrologic model (Variable Infiltration Capacity, VIC) implemented at 1/16 degree resolution over the Midwest and Great Lakes basins by UND.  First steps in the project will include initial web development, identifying a comprehensive list of streamflow sites to be included in the analysis, constructing and validating routing networks, and validating historical VIC streamflow simulations to identify calibration needs.