Investigating critical timescales of water storage and discharge in the Sierra Nevada,California.
Rosanna Neuhausler
California’s precipitation has the highest level of year-to-year variability observed in theUnited States (Dettinger et al 2011). This variability is expected to increase with future climatechange. Research finds that the likelihood of the main driver of California’s droughts concentrated high pressure off the state’s coast barring moisture from reaching the shoreline is expected to increase approximately three-fold under climate change (Swain et al 2014).
Concurrently, there is an expected increase in the frequency of intense storms during wetyears (Gao et al., 2017). In preparation for such events, it becomes important to forecast water
storage and release from its various environmental sinks for proper water resource
management. However, identification of the appropriate timescales over which such hydrologic
processes occur is one of the most salient challenges for modeling storage releases (Benettinet al., 2015; Gibson et al., 2002; McGuire & McDonnell, 2006; McNamara et al., 2011; Skøien etal., 2003). My work looks to address this challenge of distinguishing critical release response
times, expanding on previous studies analyzing flow responses in the Sierra Nevada. Godsey
et al. have shown Sagehen Creek’s low flows exhibit a ‘memory effect’, in finding a relationshipbetween the low flows during wet years and the previous year’s snowpack, in addition to thatof the current year (Godsey et al, 2013). I am using statistical techniques from information
theory to resolve such critical timescales, for a broader set of variables and over a longer
period of time than previously done, to (1) get a better understanding of the various response
times of the system to improve forecasting, and (2) analyze how/whether these timescales
have been altered by changes to the climate over the past 50 years.
References
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