Jennie S. Rice

Investigating the nexus of climate, energy, water, and land at decision-relevant scales: the Platform for Regional Integrated Modeling and Analysis (PRIMA)

The Platform for Regional Integrated Modeling and Analysis (PRIMA) is an innovative modeling system developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to simulate interactions among natural and human systems at scales relevant to regional decision making. PRIMA brings together state-of-the-art models of regional climate, hydrology, agriculture and land use, socioeconomics, and energy systems using a flexible coupling approach. Stakeholder decision support needs underpin the application of the platform to regional issues, and an uncertainty characterization process is used to identify robust decisions. The platform can be customized to inform a variety of complex questions, such as how a policy in one sector might affect the ability to meet climate mitigation targets or adaptation goals in another sector. Current numerical experiments focus on the eastern United States, but the framework is designed to be regionally flexible. This paper provides a high-level overview of PRIMA’s functional capabilities and describes some key challenges and opportunities associated with integrated regional modeling.

21st century United States emissions mitigation could increase water stress more than the climate change it is mitigating

Significance Devising sustainable climate change mitigation policies with attention to potential synergies and constraints within the climate–energy–water nexus is the subject of ongoing integrated modeling efforts. This study employs a regional integrated assessment model and a regional Earth system model at high spatial and temporal resolutions in the Unites States to compare the implications of two of the representative concentration pathways under consistent socioeconomics. The results clearly show, for the first time to our knowledge, that climate change mitigation policies, if not designed with careful attention to water resources, could increase the magnitude, spatial coverage, and frequency of water deficits. The results challenge the general perception that mitigation that aims at reducing warming also would alleviate water deficits in the future. There is evidence that warming leads to greater evapotranspiration and surface drying, thus contributing to increasing intensity and duration of drought and implying that mitigation would reduce water stresses. However, understanding the overall impact of climate change mitigation on water resources requires accounting for the second part of the equation, i.e., the impact of mitigation-induced changes in water demands from human activities. By using integrated, high-resolution models of human and natural system processes to understand potential synergies and/or constraints within the climate–energy–water nexus, we show that in the United States, over the course of the 21st century and under one set of consistent socioeconomics, the reductions in water stress from slower rates of climate change resulting from emission mitigation are overwhelmed by the increased water stress from the emissions mitigation itself. The finding that the human dimension outpaces the benefits from mitigating climate change is contradictory to the general perception that climate change mitigation improves water conditions. This research shows the potential for unintended and negative consequences of climate change mitigation.

A modeling study of coastal inundation induced by storm surge, sea-level rise, and subsidence in the Gulf of Mexico

Abstract The northern coasts of the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) are highly vulnerable to the direct threats of climate change, such as hurricane-induced storm surge, and such risks are exacerbated by land subsidence and global sea-level rise. This paper presents an application of a coastal storm surge model to study the coastal inundation process induced by tide and storm surge, and its response to the effects of land subsidence and sea-level rise in the northern Gulf coast. The unstructured-grid finite-volume coastal ocean model was used to simulate tides and hurricane-induced storm surges in the GoM. Simulated distributions of co-amplitude and co-phase lines for semi-diurnal and diurnal tides are in good agreement with previous modeling studies. The storm surges induced by four historical hurricanes (Rita, Katrina, Ivan, and Dolly) were simulated and compared to observed water levels at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tide stations. Effects of coastal subsidence and future global sea-level rise on coastal inundation in the Louisiana coast were evaluated using a “change of inundation depth” parameter through sensitivity simulations that were based on a projected future subsidence scenario and 1-m global sea-level rise by the end of the century. Model results suggested that hurricane-induced storm surge height and coastal inundation could be exacerbated by future global sea-level rise and subsidence, and that responses of storm surge and coastal inundation to the effects of sea-level rise and subsidence are highly nonlinear and vary on temporal and spatial scales.

Incorporating stakeholder decision support needs into an integrated regional Earth system model

A new modeling effort exploring the opportunities, constraints, and interactions between mitigation and adaptation at regional scale is utilizing stakeholder engagement in an innovative approach to guide model development and demonstration, including uncertainty characterization, to effectively inform regional decision making. This project, the integrated Regional Earth System Model (iRESM), employs structured stakeholder interactions and literature reviews to identify the most relevant adaptation and mitigation alternatives and decision criteria for each regional application of the framework. The information is used to identify important model capabilities and to provide a focus for numerical experiments. This paper presents the stakeholder research results from the first iRESM pilot region. The pilot region includes the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwest portion of the United States as well as other contiguous states. This geographic area (14 states in total) permits cohesive modeling of hydrologic systems while also providing strong gradients in climate, demography, land cover/land use, and energy supply and demand. The results from the stakeholder research indicate that, for this region, iRESM should prioritize addressing adaptation alternatives in the water resources, urban infrastructure, and agriculture sectors, including water conservation, expanded water quality monitoring, altered reservoir releases, lowered water intakes, urban infrastructure upgrades, increased electric power reserves in urban areas, and land use management/crop selection changes. For mitigation in this region, the stakeholder research implies that iRESM should focus on policies affecting the penetration of renewable energy technologies, and the costs and effectiveness of energy efficiency, bioenergy production, wind energy, and carbon capture and sequestration.

Climate and Energy-Water-Land System Interactions Technical Report to the U.S. Department of Energy in Support of the National Climate Assessment

This report provides a framework to characterize and understand the important elements of climate and energy-water-land (EWL) system interactions. It identifies many of the important issues, discusses our understanding of those issues, and presents a long-term research program research needs to address the priority scientific challenges and gaps in our understanding. Much of the discussion is organized around two discrete case studies with the broad themes of (1) extreme events and (2) regional intercomparisons. These case studies help demonstrate unique ways in which energy-water-land interactions can occur and be influenced by climate.

Sensitivity of future U.S. Water shortages to socioeconomic and climate drivers: a case study in Georgia using an integrated human-earth system modeling framework

One of the most important interactions between humans and climate is in the demand and supply of water. Humans withdraw, use, and consume water and return waste water to the environment for a variety of socioeconomic purposes, including domestic, commercial, and industrial use, production of energy resources and cooling thermal-electric power plants, and growing food, fiber, and chemical feed stocks for human consumption. Uncertainties in the future human demand for water interact with future impacts of climatic change on water supplies to impinge on water management decisions at the international, national, regional, and local level, but until recently tools were not available to assess the uncertainties surrounding these decisions. This paper demonstrates the use of a multi-model framework in a structured sensitivity analysis to project and quantify the sensitivity of future deficits in surface water in the context of climate and socioeconomic change for all U.S. states and sub-basins. The framework treats all sources of water demand and supply consistently from the world to local level. The paper illustrates the capabilities of the framework with sample results for a river sub-basin in the U.S. state of Georgia.

Characterizing Uncertainty for Regional Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Decisions

This white paper describes the results of new research to develop an uncertainty characterization process to help address the challenges of regional climate change mitigation and adaptation decisions.

iRESM INITIATIVE UNDERSTANDING DECISION SUPPORT NEEDS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION --US Midwest Region—

The impacts of climate change are already affecting human and environmental systems worldwide, yet many uncertainties persist in the prediction of future climate changes and impacts due to limitations in scientific understanding of relevant causal factors. In particular, there is mounting urgency to efforts to improve models of human and environmental systems at the regional scale, and to integrate climate, ecosystem and energy-economic models to support policy, investment, and risk management decisions related to climate change mitigation (i.e., reducing greenhouse gas emissions) and adaptation (i.e., responding to climate change impacts). The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is developing a modeling framework, the integrated Regional Earth System Model (iRESM), to address regional human-environmental system interactions in response to climate change and the uncertainties therein. The framework will consist of a suite of integrated models representing regional climate change, regional climate policy, and the regional economy, with a focus on simulating the mitigation and adaptation decisions made over time in the energy, transportation, agriculture, and natural resource management sectors.