ENVS 65 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Adaptive Capacity, Sea Level Rise, Scada
Document Summary
Prospective vs. retrospective models of water supply and demand. Water agencies build their predictions based on the extremes that have occurred in the past extreme droughts (e. g. , 1976-77), extreme floods, extreme heat waves. They believe that if they can meet water supply projections under these extreme conditions then they have demonstrated "due diligence" in preparing for the future. There is a potential problem with this approach. With greenhouse gas loading, the past may not be a good indicator of the future. That is, past extreme events may not be as extreme as upcoming ones due to climatic changes. On the one hand, they have their logical, tried-and-true retrospective models. On the other hand, they have new, prospective models that take greenhouse gas loading into consideration. Before returning to this question, let"s first remind ourselves what water agencies are concerned about when it comes to climate change. They want resiliency in their water systems.
