The evolution of hydrology in an interdisciplinary earth science setting

Dennis P. LettenmaierDepartment of Civil and Environmental

EngineeringUniversity of Washington

AMS Walter Orr Roberts LectureSan Diego

January 19, 2004

Outline

1) Walter Orr Roberts

2) Background – history of hydrology

3) Recent evolution; “hydrology at the interface”

Land-atmosphere interactions

Land-ocean interactionsHydrology in the context of global environmental change

4) Doing interdisciplinary research: issues, successes, and failures

5) Emerging opportunities6) Issues and roadblocks

Walter Orr Roberts 1915-1990• Director, High Altitude Observatory (Climax, CO) through

1960• First Director, NCAR, 1960-68• UCAR President, 1968-73• Director, UN Program on Food, Climate, and the World’s

Future 1973-81• Among many honors and awards (10 honorary

doctorates!) he was known for:– Worked to maintain scientific contacts with Soviet Union during

Cold War– Held together HAO through difficult times, staff once worked a

month without pay– Preferred title “Superintendent” of HAO to “Director” as more

modest– “Walked with kings and never lost the common touch” (John

Eddy, Journal American Astronomical Society, 1991)

2) History of Hydrology (a condensed version)

•Two pathways:

Water development (engineering, e.g., dams and distribution systems)

Scientific understanding (genesis of runoff; water cycle)

•Former evolved largely absent scientific understanding (but impressive structures as far back as almost 5000 years in Middle East

•Headway modest on latter until 18th Century, but linkage to atmosphere was always key (which it was not in engineering pathway)

•Engineering considerations began to dominate science in late 19th and 20th Century with formation of USGS and U.S. stream gauging network (hydrologic design could proceed on basis of knowledge of streamflow alone

•With first computers in 1950s came watershed models (e.g. Stanford Watershed Model), but linkages to atmosphere were minimal (model forcings typically precipitation and PET; no explicit vegetation)

Sadd-el-Kafara Dam, Egypt, 2600 BC (photo from Schnitter,1994)

“No hydrological or meteorological instrument has received attention so consistently and for such a long period as the rain gauge” (Biswas, 1970)

“As a result of rapid growth in the 1880's, the U.S. population began to branch westward into the drier regions of the country, leaving the usually dependable waterways of the East far behind. In 1889, the first U.S. stream-gaging station was established on the Rio Grande near Embudo, New Mexico. By 1895, discharge measurements were being made by the USGS in at least 27 states throughout the country.”

Delaware River Basin Commission, A brief history of stream gauges

“There is no reliable mathematical process by which the best value for the quota, or the necessary size of the reservoir can be calculated, since these figures depend not only on the mean discharge but on the exact sequent of high and low years which may occur in the future” (A.D. Butcher, 1938, quoted in Hurst et al, 1965)

Stochastic hydrology – the underlying problem (from Hurst et al, 1965)

Colorado River Natural Flow at Lee Ferry, AZ

Currently used 16.3 BCM

allocated20.3 BCM

Hydrologic simulation modeling – the Stanford Watershed model (per Steve Gorelik and Keith Loague)

Status of hydrologic research ~1980

• Stochastic (or “synthetic”) hydrology – attempting to reproduce statistics of observed streamflow time series (ostensibly for reservoir sizing)

• Conceptual hydrologic modeling – for reproduction of streamflow records (typically at daily or subdaily – “storm” time steps) for streamflow forecasting, and design/analysis where precipitation record lengths exceed those for streamflow

• Hillslope/small catchment scale observation and modeling

• Groundwater

13,382dams,

Hydrology post ~1980: the “push”

Visual courtesy Hiroshi Ishidaira, Yamanashi University

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Reservoir construction has slowed.

visual courtesy Peter Gleick

from Arnell (1999)

Hydrology post ~1980: the “pull”

From Bowling and Lettenmaier, 1997

Hydrology post ~1980: the “pull” (cont.)

3) Recent history; “hydrology at the interface”

“There are no interesting problems in hydrology. They are all at the interface”

Eric Wood

a) Land-atmosphere interactions

from Lynn et al, 1995

The land surface matters …

From Lynn et al (1995)

From Avissar et al, 2002

The land surface matters …

From Koster and Suarez, 1995

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Effects of Land Surface Initialization on Extended Range Weather Forecast Skill (from Qian and Leung, 2005)

ISLSCP Field Experiment Design

Land-atmosphere interactions – the observational basis

BOREAS study designBOREAS IFC Strategy

BOREAS (BOReal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study) – 1994-96

Visuals from Running et al (1999) and Margolis and Ryan (1997)

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Land-atmosphere interactions – model evolution

The Manabe-Budyko bucket (Manabe, 1969)

SiB (Simple Biosphere model) – per Sellers et al (1986)

Source: Maurer et al, 2002

VIC long-term monthly streamflow simulations, selected large continental U.S. rivers

b) Land-ocean interactions

Trend = 7.3 km3/year

Su et al. 2005

www.clivar.org

Arctic Ocean Freshwater Budget (HadCM3 Results)

Cattle and Cresswell, 2000

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Discharge of the major Arctic rivers

Carleton et al. (1990)

Local SST ( e.g. Gulf of California) has influence on the monsoon

Fig.9 Correlation of SSTs and Arizona summer rainfall in wet years

Remote SST in equatorial Pacific in El Nino (La Nina) tends to be associated with dry (wet) monsoon

Fig. 19. Maps of the composite seasonal (JJAS) precipitation anomalies (mm day−1) for El Nino (La Nina).

Higgins et al, 1999

Higher (lower) winter precipitation & spring snowpack

More (less) spring soil moisture

Weak (strong) monsoon

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Winter Precipitation - Monsoon Rainfall Land Surface feedback hypothesis (Zhu et al, 2004)

c) Hydrology in the context of global environmental change

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Global Scale Hydrologic Prediction

from Nijssen et al, 2001

Seasonal Evapotranspiration (1980-1993)

from Nijssen et al, 2001

GCM Predicted Climate ChangeChange in precipitation and temperature for selected basins

GFDL_CGCMCCCMA-CGCM1

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Glen Canyon Dam, USGS 1984

Mechanisms by which humans are

affecting the GWS

reservoirs, withdrawal, transfers, resulting in stop-flow events, changes in nutrient and sediment fluxes etc.

Global Water System Project

IGBP – IHDP – WCRP - Diversitas

Human modificationof hydrological systems

Regulated Flow

Historic Naturalized Flow

Estimated Range of Naturalized FlowWith 2040’s Warming

Figure 1: mean seasonal hydrographs of the Columbia River prior to (blue) and after the completion of reservoirs that now have storage capacity equal to about one-third of the river’s mean annual flow (red), and the projected range of impacts on naturalized flows predicted to result from a range of global warming scenarios over the next century. Climate change scenarios IPCC Data and Distribution Center, hydrologic simulations courtesy of A. Hamlet, University of Washington.

Global Water System Project

IGBP – IHDP – WCRP - Diversitas

(http://hydro.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/GW/result)

Global Runoff & Water useGlobal Runoff & Water use

a) Latent heat b) Sensible heat c) Surface temperature

Wm-2 Wm-2 °C0 10 20 -30 -20 -10 0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0

Colorado River Basin

Mekong River Basin

Simulated changes in latent and sensible heat, and surface temperature, due to irrigation

from Haddeland et al, 2005

Simulated effects of irrigation and reservoirs on discharge of Colorado and Mekong Rivers

from Haddeland et al, 2005

Visual from Palmieri, NAS Sackler symposium, 2004

The social context: water storage per person globally

HUMAN COMPONENTSe.g. water related institutions,

water engineering works,water use sectors

WATER CYCLING

PHYSICAL COMPONENTS

e.g. moisture transport, precipitation,

river discharge, water storage volumes

BIOLOGICAL & BIOGEOCHEMICAL

COMPONENTSe.g. species richness,

habitat quality,water quality

The Global Water System

Table courtesy Peter Gleick

4) Doing interdisciplinary research – successes and failures

a)The EOS IDS experience

b)RISAs, and the UW Climate Impacts Group

EOS/IDS• Attempt to “build” the science community to support Mission

to Planet Earth, an interdisciplinary effort by construct• Long-term, (reasonably) stable funding, initial projects 10

years, starting in late 1980s• (At least) two models: a) primarily single institution, b)

multi-institution “best players” (problems with both)• Overall success of IDS: community building (e.g. IWG

meetings twice/year), and developing a global perspective linked to remote sensing. Shortcoming: productivity per dollar (or scientist) inversely proportional to n (generally true of most large projects)

• IDS is now “just another” research program (3-year grants, smaller teams) – IDS vision arguably died with launch of Terra and Aqua

• Hard to separate lots of “good stuff” produced by IDS investigators from progress in interdisciplinary science (not even clear what the evaluation criteria are, or should be, beyond getting different communities to talk to each other)

The Miles Recipe cont’d

• All participants must have at least some interest in end-to-end integration, including the human dimensions.

• At least two people in the team must have as their primary responsibility “seeing the problem whole” and facilitating interconnections when and where needed.

• All must be involved in interactions with stakeholders to some extent.

• Stir until done

5) Emerging opportunities

1) Continuing trends (e.g., dynamic vegetation, linked biogeochemistry, land-atmosphere interactions at weather to climate time scales) – and numerous “second tier” issues on which progress in these areas depend

2) Linked aspects of human behavior and the water cycle at regional to continental (and perhaps global) scales

3) Prediction of interactions between hydrological and biological (terrestrial and aquatic) systems, e.g., in the context of biodiversity and species extinction

6) Issues and roadblocks

1) Social dynamics and Inefficiencies of large projects

2) Career evaluation criteria (multi-authored publications, journal preferences, etc.)

3) Disciplinary structure of funding sources (influence of research funding can’t be overemphasized)

4) Inertia, inappropriateness of research results, and various other obstacles to implementation of research advances (one aspect of human dimensions research)

Thanks to:

• AMS, for providing a professional home for research on land-atmosphere interactions

• The following individuals, for material used in this talk:– Jenny Adam– Ingjerd Haddeland– Jordan Lanini– Ruby Leung– Ed Miles– Andrea Ray – Steve Running– Amy Snover– Anne Steinemann– Eric Wood – Chunmei Zhu– and many others …