"Climate Change Impact Analysis using HydroGeoSphere" - Aquanty Webinar

As the relevant components of the global climate (e.g. temperature and precipitation patterns/intensity) drift further from historically reliable patterns, it becomes harder and harder to rely on these historical patterns as part of hydrologic studies. This is why HydroGeoSphere is an incredibly powerful tool for long-term climate change impact analyses of hydrologic systems.

As a physics-based simulation platform with a de-emphasis on the use of empirical relationships, HydroGeoSphere is an exceptionally powerful tool for modelling ‘unknowns’. These unknowns include regions with little to no observation data, but more importantly this physics-based approach is the most realistic and reliable way to simulate how water resources systems will react to future climatic conditions.

In this webinar Aquanty’s resident climate scientist Dr. Andre Erler introduced key topics and considerations that should form the basis for all climate change impact analyses using HydroGeoSphere. Topics of discussion will include:

• Introduction to climate modelling: International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Global Climate Models (GCMs), Regional Climate Models (RCMs)

• Applying climate model output to HGS: bias-correction, data pre-processing, boundary condition conceptualization

• Study design: scenario analysis, producing climate ensembles, addressing the signal-to-noise paradox in long-term climate predictions

• Case study review: investigating climate change Impacts on surface water and groundwater interactions in the Grand River Watershed

• Concluding remarks: summary and overview of the Canada1Water project - a blueprint for high-resolution climate change impact analysis across Canada