For decades, scientists, engineers, biologists, hydrologists and resource managers have designed water resources systems assuming that past events were appropriate harbingers of future conditions. The lowest recorded streamflows and the maximum annual peak flows were used indicators of what to design for and what to expect in the future. Today, as we experience and acknowledge the impacts of climate change, we note “hundred year floods” and “design droughts” occurring with uncommon frequency.
This talk explores what we can expect to occur to with respect streamflows in the Connecticut River basin as we move into the 21st century. The talk will begin with a brief introduction to why our climate is changing and evidence for that change. On-going studies of climate change and its impacts on the Connecticut River will be presented, including forecasts of changes in our temperatures and precipitation by mid-21st century. The impact of these changes on streamflows in the Connecticut River and the related impact on hydropower and the river’s ecosystems will also be discussed.
Speaker: Dr. Richard N. Palmer is Department Head and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts; and Northeast Climate Science Center, Director and Principal Investigator. His specialties include surface water hydrology, climate modeling and scaling, conflict resolution, resource policy and economics, groundwater hydrology.
Image: The Oxbow -Thomas Cole (1835) from Wikipedia
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