Potential Impacts of Climate Warming on Water Supply Reliability in the Tuolumne and Merced River Basins, California

We present an integrated hydrology/water operations simulation model of the Tuolumne and Merced River Basins, California, using the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) platform. The model represents hydrology as well as water operations, which together influence water supplied for agricultural, urban, and environmental uses. The model is developed for impacts assessment using scenarios for climate change and other drivers of water system behavior. In this paper, we describe the model structure, its representation of historical streamflow, agricultural and urban water demands, and water operations. We describe projected impacts of climate change on hydrology and water supply to the major irrigation districts in the area, using uniform 2°C, 4°C, and 6°C increases applied to climate inputs from the calibration period. Consistent with other studies, we find that the timing of hydrology shifts earlier in the water year in response to temperature warming (5–21 days). The integrated agricultural model responds with increased water demands 2°C (1.4–2.0%), 4°C (2.8–3.9%), and 6°C (4.2–5.8%). In this sensitivity analysis, the combination of altered hydrology and increased demands results in decreased reliability of surface water supplied for agricultural purposes, with modeled quantity-based reliability metrics decreasing from a range of 0.84–0.90 under historical conditions to 0.75–0.79 under 6°C warming scenario.