Presenter
Rao Kotamarthi, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
Environmental Science Division
Argonne National Laboratory
Description
In this presentation, we will report on our work using dynamic downscaling (using WRF) over North America at a spatial resolution of 12km and 4km. The design of the ensemble and the numerical model simulations for current climate and future projections, model biases and value added will be discussed. The application of this downscaled data archive for estimating climate impacts, climate risks from these impacts at spatial resolutions that could be used for informing decisions at infrastructure and installation scales will be discussed. For example, high resolution wind data, temperature and atmospheric water vapor will serve better for drought and wildfire risk estimates, simulating tropical convective storms provide guidance on coastal flooding and coastal flood risks; high resolution precipitation will provide much better dataset for hydrological modeling (such as WRF-Hydro®) that is useful for estimating flood risks and stream flow changes. We will present the use of these impact data to generate return periods, estimate extremes event risks and their uncertainties using and approach based on Generalized Extreme Value methodology. Some recent applications of these various impact and climate risk estimates to private utility sector partners and public sector entities will be discussed.
