Seminar: Thursday January 10, 2008 3:30-4:30pm, Mueller Room 153

Speaker: Dr. Alan Hamlet

Research Scientist, UW Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering

http://www.ce.washington.edu/~hamleaf/hamlet/hydro_front_door_hamlet.htm

Title:  Understanding the Civil Engineering Implications of Climate Change 
 in the Western U.S.
 
Abstract

Climate change, and particularly rapid temperature changes which are projected with the 
greatest certainty, will result in significant hydrologic changes in the Western U.S. in the 
21st century including reduced natural storage as mountain snowpack, increased river flow 
in winter, reduced flow in summer, and increased water temperature. Changes in hydrologic 
extremes (droughts and floods) are likely to occur. Hydrologic impacts will not be equally 
distributed, and areas near freezing in mid winter will be the most sensitive to warming related 
losses of snowpack and resultant streamflow timing shifts. A large number of impact pathways 
related to engineering design, water resources management, water quality, and ecosystem 
function are likely to be activated by these hydrologic changes.  As a result there is a wide-
spread need to incorporate expected changes in climate into long range planning activities at 
all levels of governance. Achieving this goal will require the development and use of model-based 
scenarios to replace historic records of important variables such as streamflow, and will also require 
more sophisticated and flexible approaches to engineering design problems. Such changes will 
have far reaching implications for academic programs and professional practice in civil engineering, 
requiring, for example, a much greater focus on integrated modeling studies related to climate and 
water (as opposed to the analysis of historic records) and an increased emphasis on interdisciplinary 
science and management approaches reflecting the complex interdisciplinary nature of many climate 
change impacts related to water.