Integrated framework for rapid climate stress testing on a monthly timestep

Abstract

“Bottom-up” methods are increasingly used to assess the vulnerability of water systems to climate change. Central to these methods is the climate “stress test”, where the system is subjected to various climatic changes to test for unacceptable outcomes. We present a framework for climate stress testing on a monthly timestep, suitable for systems whose dominant dynamic is seasonal or longer (eg. water resource systems with carry-over storage). The framework integrates multi-site stochastic climate generation with perturbation methods and in-built rainfall runoff modelling. The stochastic generation includes a low frequency component suitable for representing multi-annual fluctuations. Multipl..