US Army Corps of Engineers Approach to Water Resources Climate Change Adaptation

The magnitude of climate change impacts facing water resources managers in the United States has spurred closer interagency cooperation in developing methods supporting planning and engineering for climate change adaptation. The two largest water resources management agencies in the U.S., the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, have partnered to describe climate change challenges, identify user needs for improving tools and information, and assess capabilities to use weather and climate forecasts in federal water resources management. They have also hosted a forum with national and international experts exploring the issue of nonstationary hydrology with respect to climate change. In progress is development of multiagency guidelines for best practices to select from the portfolio of climate information including global climate scenarios, through general circulation models, through downscaling, to regional or watershed-scale hydrological and operations planning models to account properly for climate change and variability at the scale of water-resource operational decisions. This presentation describes collaborative activities and the resulting methods being used as both agencies plan for and implement climate change adaptation measures.