UMRBA – ORSANCO JOINT MEETING

JUNE 2013

EXTREME WEATHER EVENTSAND

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate Change and Public Policy

• Definition of Climate Change• Impacts of Extreme Events• Tools for Analysis• Policy at local, state, regional and federal

levels

Climate Change• Climate change/climate variability/global

warming/global cooling – you tell me which phrase suits your conditions and agency interests

• Observations– Frequency of large floods

• 1986/87, 1993, 1995, 2008, 2011, 2013– Frequency and magnitude of drought

• 2007, 2012– Fewer frontal systems, more major storms

• Hurricane Ike, number of rainfall events in excess of 5 inches in 24 hours

Damage Assessments• Costs of Public Response

– Katrina– Floods of 1993, 2008, and 2011– Drought of 2012

• NOAA: If we look at the list of US Billion dollar weather events there is a very clear pattern visible even over the last 30 years.– The weather is the news, and these extreme weather events are

becoming more frequent. Want to connect the dots ?– The U.S. has had 109 weather-related disasters over the past

31+ years in which overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total standardized losses for the 109 events exceed $750 billion.

– The events are from the NOAA Satellite and Information Service

Sea Level Rise:Floods Threaten Coastal U.S.Published: Mar 16th, 2012 Our sea level rise analysis, complete with interactive map, allows you to search by city, state, or zip code to see maps, statistics, factsheets, and more for areas below different amounts of sea level rise and flooding.

Political Awareness of Extreme Events• May 15, 2013• DURBIN: SENATE PASSES WRDA BILL THAT INVESTS IN ILLINOIS PRIORITIES AND WILL MAKE US

BETTER PREPARED FOR DROUGHTS, FLOODS• [WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today said that the Water Resources

Development Act of 2013 that the U.S. Senate passed earlier today by a strong bipartisan vote of 83-14 invests in Illinois priorities and will make Illinois and the Midwest better prepared for extreme weather events like droughts and floods.

• “This legislation is important to the commerce that moves on the Mississippi River, the Illinois River and other Illinois waterways; to those communities and towns throughout our state that rely on the Army Corps of Engineers to protect them from flooding and other storm damage; and to the natural resources that our rivers, streams and wetlands represent,” said Durbin.

• “I’m pleased that the bill addresses extreme weather. It’s clear that extreme weather events are becoming more severe and more frequent. Consider the last year: the two costliest natural disasters in the world occurred in the United States – the Midwest drought and Hurricane Sandy, costing $100 billion. We can’t ignore the reality that weather events like these are the new normal.”

Trends in precipitation and streamflow in the eastern U.S.: Paradox or perception?1.David Small1, 2.Shafiqul Islam2, 3.Richard M. Vogel2

                                                  

Geophysical Research LettersVolume 33, Issue 3, February 2006

Many studies have reported that total precipitation is increasing across the United States with most of the increase resulting from a positive trend in the upper tail of the daily precipitation distribution.

Other studies have found that low and moderate, but not high flows are also increasing across much of the United States . How can precipitation, especially that produced by intense events, increase without a corresponding increase in high flows?

We analyzed trends in annual 7-day low, average and high flows along with seasonal precipitation that is averaged over individual basins. Our

findings suggest that statistically significant trends in both fall precipitation and 7-day low flow are found in a large percentage of the basins in the upper Mississippi and Great Lakes regions of the country. A large fraction of the trends in annual precipitation can be explained by an increase in fall precipitation . By estimating trends in precipitation at the spatial scale of individual basins, we offer a simple explanation for the apparent paradox of lack of trends in high flows.

At the spatial scale of individual basins, precipitation is increasing during the fall but not during the spring, the season when high flows are generally observed. The increase in fall precipitation appears to result in an increase in the low flows while the lack of trends in precipitation in spring explains the lack of widespread trends in the high flows .

Contemporary Changes of the Hydrological Cycle over the Contiguous United States: Trends Derived from In Situ ObservationsPavel Ya Groisman, Richard W. Knight, Thomas R. Karl, David R. Easterling, Bomin Sun, and Jay H. Lawrimore National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina

Over the contiguous United States, precipitation, temperature, streamflow, and heavy and very heavy precipitation have increased during the twentieth century. In the east, high

streamflow has increased as well.

Soil wetness (as described by the Keetch–Byram Drought index) has increased over the northern and eastern regions of the United States, but in

the southwestern quadrant of the country soil dryness has increased, making the region more susceptible to forest fires.

In addition to these changes during the past 50 yr, increases in evaporation, near-surface humidity, total cloud cover, and low stratiform and cumulonimbus

clouds have been observed.

Snow cover has diminished earlier in the year in the west, and a decrease in near-surface wind speed has also occurred in many areas. Much of the

increase in heavy and very heavy precipitation has occurred during the past three decades.

Received: May 2, 2003; Accepted: October 15, 2003

5 ConclusionsWe developed maps of annual streamflow anomalies over the coterminous United States using streamflow records selected to reflect minimum direct impacts from human land disturbance and water diversion. We find that streamflow increased around 1970 in concert with an increase in precipitation, but has not increased since then. Our analysis supports net drying in some regions, and no change in others, as a result of greenhouse warming, with tentative evidence for the opposing effects of warming and CO2 increase. Depending on how this interplay between temperature and direct CO2 effect of greenhouse gas emissions evolves, there is a high risk of reduced water supplies and increased plant water stress with continued warming in coming decades.

Acknowledgements. NYK thanks the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA) for a Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship. IF acknowledges support from NOAA Office of Global Programs, Award NA05OAR4311167, and NSF, Award 0628678. We thank Marc Bierkens, Laurens Bouwer, Attilio Castellarin, and Shilong Piao for reviewing this paper during the Discussion stage; Alanood Alkhaled, Anna Michalak and Kim Mueller for geostatistics help; Boris Fain, Jim Hunt, Tom Pagano, and Alexander Stine for proofreading and useful suggestions; and Graham Farquhar, Chandra Pathak, Michael Roderick and Ramesh Teegavarapu for comments at a conference presentation of an earlier version of this work.Edited by: B. van den Hurk

Mapping and attribution of change in streamflow in the coterminous United StatesN. Y. Krakauer and I. FungUniversity of California at Berkeley, USAReceived: 12 February 2008 – Published in Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss.: 19 March

Response to Extreme Events

• Federal agencies addressing climate change• Research regarding climate change• Policies are being revised to include climate

change• NFIP Reform Act was approved in response to

growing financial strain due to extreme events

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT ?

1. WE ARE AT INCREASED RISK OF UNPREDICTABLE CONDITIONS

2. Policies are still changing in regard to climate extremes

LET’S REVIEW THREE OF OUR RECENT EXPERIENCES

1. Flood of 20112. Flood of 20133. Drought of 2012

Flood of 2011• Unprecedented rainfall

– Total rainfall– Aerial Distribution

• Historic flood stages and Record Discharges– Ohio, Wabash, Interior tributaries

• Operations for extreme events is rare– Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway– Ohio River Basin Reservoir release coordination

Extreme Weather Map 2011

– 2011: Thousands of Weather Records Broken in the US, Costs Climbing – and Climate Change a Factor

– Climate change increases the risk of record-breaking extreme weather events that threaten communities across the country. In 2011, there were 3,251 monthly weather records broken by extreme events that struck communities in the US.

Inflow at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers (Image credit: Army Corps of Engineers)

Floods of 2013

• From the end of drought in February to floods of April, 2013

• Flooding along Mississippi, Illinois, Wabash Rivers and other interior streams

• Record flood peaks along Illinois River and tributaries

• Floods the result of persistent rainfall creating saturated ground, followed by 4 to 7 inch storm

• Additional event in late May and early June led to recurring high water

Drought of 2012

• Extreme national drought conditions• Illinois – drought progressed from southern

Illinois to northern Illinois• Agricultural impacts were great• Rural water supplies were stressed• Aflotoxins reduced the value of corn crop• Mississippi River navigation problems in late

fall and early winter

2012: The Hottest U.S. Year on RecordPublished: Dec 13th, 2012 Climate Central did the math, and the numbers don't lie: 2012 will be the hottest U.S. year ever recorded, pushing 1998 into second place, followed by 2006, 1934 and 1999.

Mississippi River Navigation Issues

• Infrastructure rehabilitation/ reconstruction• Low water issues during drought

– Rock pinnacles– Dependence on all water sources

• Great Lakes• Missouri River System• Upper Mississippi River

– National Plan for Navigation System Operation

Planning Approaches To Address Extremes

• Flood Risk Management– Watershed Plans

• Retain waters on-site with wetlands, rain gardens and barrels

• Relocation/buyouts/floodplain restoration

– Planning and Design Tools

• Drought Management– Planning for future droughts– Reallocation of water to meet limited supplies

Watershed Planning• A catch-word that gains favor, lapses into

obscurity, then regains favor again• Federal/state/local partnerships

– Narrow agency missions not covering all watershed needs

– Each agency has their own administrative and policy constraints

– Principles and Guidelines have not required uniformity among federal agencies

• States and other partners are not jurisdictionally structured by watersheds

Risk and Uncertainty

• FEMA is pursuing Risk Map to help define a wider range of risks

• Corps incorporates Risk and Uncertainty in study analyses to apply factors that account for the potential to experience greater risk

• Precipitation estimation methods differ– Technical Paper 40– Bulletin 70 in Illinois– Weather Service Bulletin 14

Precipitation Estimating• U. S. Weather Bureau Technical Paper 40

• ISWS Bulletin 13

• Bulletin 71 - (MCC Research Report 92-03)– RAINFALL FREQUENCY ATLAS OF THE MIDWEST by Floyd A. Huff and James R. Angel– Midwestern Climate Center Climate Analysis Center– National Weather Service National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

• Illinois State Water Survey 1992• http://www.isws.illinois.edu/pubdoc/b/iswsb-71.pdf

• NOAA Atlas 14– Precipitation-Frequency Atlas of the United States

• Volume 2 Version 3.0: Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New

• Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia

Geoffrey M. Bonnin, Deborah Martin, Bingzhang Lin, Tye– Parzybok, Michael Yekta, David Riley

• Spring, Maryland, 2004, revised 2006• http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hdsc/PF_documents/Atlas14_Volume2.pdf

Future

• More risk and uncertainty• Greater awareness of the watershed connectivity

between issues and across jurisdictions• Congressional approach to problem solving will

change• Population Growth• Public Infrastructure Needs Must Be Addressed• Federal/state/local/non traditional funding

Thank You

• Arlan R. Juhl, P.E.• Director, Office of Water Resources• Illinois Department of Natural Resources• One Natural Resources Way• Springfield, Illinois 62702• arlan.juhl@illinois.gov• 217-785-3334