Framework for Incorporating Downscaled Climate Output into Existing Engineering Methods: Application to Precipitation Frequency Curves
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 23, Issue 4
Abstract
To improve the resiliency of designs, particularly for long-lived infrastructure, current engineering practice must be updated to incorporate a range of future climate conditions that are likely to be different from the past. However, a considerable mismatch exists between climate model outputs and the data inputs needed for engineering designs. This paper provides a framework for incorporating climate trends into design standards and applications, including selecting the appropriate climate model source based on the intended application, understanding model performance and uncertainties, addressing differences in temporal and spatial scales, and interpreting results for engineering design. The framework is illustrated through an application to depth-duration-frequency curves, which are commonly used in stormwater design. A change factor method is used to update the curves in a case study of Pittsburgh. Extreme precipitation depth is expected to increase in the future for Pittsburgh for all return periods and durations examined, requiring revised standards and designs. Doubling the return period and using historical, stationary values may enable adequate design for short-duration storms; however, this method is shown to be insufficient to enable protective designs for longer-duration storms.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF Collaborative Award Number CMMI 1635638/1635686), by the John and Claire Bertucci Fellowship, and by the Center for Engineering and Resilience for Climate Adaptation in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors are grateful to Dr. Jeanne VanBriesen for helpful comments and to four anonymous reviewers whose suggestions greatly improved the manuscript. The authors acknowledge the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) and the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) for their roles in making available the WCRP CMIP3 multimodel data set. Support of this data set is provided by the Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy. The authors also wish to thank the North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) for providing the data used. The NARCCAP is funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development.
References
3 Rivers Wet Weather. (2011). “Calibrated radar rainfall data.” ⟨http://www.3riverswetweather.org/municipalities/calibrated-radar-rainfall-data⟩ (Jun. 3, 2016).
Abatzoglou, J. T., and Brown, T. J. (2012). “A comparison of statistical downscaling methods suited for wildfire applications.” Int. J. Climatol., 32(5), 772–780.
Anderson, C. J., et al. (2003). “Hydrological processes in regional climate model simulations of the central United States flood of June–July 1993.” J. Hydrometeorol., 4(3), 584–598.
Andréasson, J., Bergström, S., Carlsson, B., Graham, L. P., and Lindström, G. (2004). “Hydrological change—Climate change impact simulations for Sweden.” J. Human Environ., 33(4), 228–234.
Arnbjerg-Nielsen, K. (2011). “Past, present, and future design of urban drainage systems with focus on Danish experiences.” Water Sci. Technol., 63(3), 527–535.
Arnbjerg-Nielsen, K., et al. (2013). “Impacts of climate change on rainfall extremes and urban drainage systems: A review.” Water Sci. Technol., 68(1), 16–28.
ASCE. (2013). “Minimum design loads for buildings and other structures.” Structural Engineering Institute, Reston, VA.
Barros, A. (2006). “Rainfall parameters for design storms under a changing climate.” Center for Transportation and the Environment, North Carolina State Univ., USDoT, Washington, DC.
Barros, A., and Evans, J. (1997). “Designing for climate variability.” J. Prof. Issues Eng. Educ. Pract., 62–65.
Barros, A. P., Duan, Y., Brun, J., and Medina, M. A., Jr. (2014). “Flood nonstationarity in the southeast and mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 5014014.
Barsugli, J. J., et al. (2013). “The practitioner’s dilemma: How to assess the credibility of downscaled climate projections.” Eos Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 94(46), 424–425.
Beguería, S. (2005). “Uncertainties in partial duration series modelling of extremes related to the choice of the threshold value.” J. Hydrol., 303(1), 215–230.
Boé, J., Terray, L., Habets, F., and Martin, E. (2007). “Statistical and dynamical downscaling of the Seine basin climate for hydro-meteorological studies.” Int. J. Climatol., 27(12), 1643–1656.
Bonnin, G. M., Martin, D., Lin, B., Parzybok, T., Yekta, M., and Riley, D. (2006). “NOAA Atlas 14: Precipitation-frequency atlas of the United States, volume 2, version 3.0.” ⟨http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hdsc/PF_documents/Atlas14_Volume2.pdf⟩ (Jun. 3, 2016).
Bosilovich, M. G., Chen, J., Robertson, F. R., and Adler, R. F. (2008). “Evaluation of global precipitation in reanalyses.” J. Appl. Meteorol. Climatol., 47(9), 2279–2299.
Chandra, R., Saha, U., and Mujumdar, P. P. (2015). “Model and parameter uncertainty in IDF relationships under climate change.” Adv. Water Resour., 79(May), 127–139.
Charles, S. P., Bates, B. C., Whetton, P. H., and Hughes, J. P. (1999). “Validation of downscaling models for changed climate conditions: Case study of southwestern Australia.” Clim. Res., 12(1), 1–14.
Chen, D., Achberger, C., Ou, T., Postgård, U., Walther, A., and Liao, Y. (2015). “Projecting future local precipitation and its extremes for Sweden.” Geografiska Annaler: Series A, Phys. Geogr., 97(1), 25–39.
Chen, J., Brissette, F. P., Chaumont, D., and Braun, M. (2013). “Performance and uncertainty evaluation of empirical downscaling methods in quantifying the climate change impacts on hydrology over two North American river basins.” J. Hydrol., 479(0), 200–214.
Chen, J., Brissette, F. P., and Leconte, R. (2011). “Uncertainty of downscaling method in quantifying the impact of climate change on hydrology.” J. Hydrol., 401(3–4), 190–202.
Cheng, L., and AghaKouchak, A. (2014). “Nonstationary precipitation intensity-duration-frequency curves for infrastructure design in a changing climate.” Scientific Rep., 4, 7093.
Coles, S. (2001). An introduction to statistical modeling of extreme values, 1st Ed., Springer, London.
Collins, M., et al. (2013). “Long-term climate change: Projections, commitments and irreversibility.”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1029–1136.
Cooney, C. M. (2012). “Downscaling climate models: Sharpening the focus on local-level changes.” Environ. Health Perspect., 120(1), a22–a28.
CSA Standards. (2012). “Development, interpretation, and use of rainfall intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) information: Guideline for Canadian water resources practitioners.” Canadian Standards Association, ON, Canada.
Dee, D., Fasullo, J., Shea, D., and Walsh, J. (2016). “The climate data guide: Atmospheric reanalysis: Overview & comparison tables.” ⟨https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/atmospheric-reanalysis-overview-comparison-tables⟩ (Jan. 21, 2016).
Dee, D. P., et al. (2011). “The ERA-interim reanalysis: Configuration and performance of the data assimilation system.” Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 137(656), 553–597.
DeGaetano, A. T. (2009). “Time-dependent changes in extreme-precipitation return-period amounts in the continental United States.” J. Appl. Meteorol. Climatol., 48(10), 2086–2099.
Di Luca, A., de Elía, R., and Laprise, R. (2015). “Challenges in the quest for added value of regional climate dynamical downscaling.” Current Clim. Change Rep., 1(1), 10–21.
Durrans, S. (1999). “Polynomial-based disaggregation of hourly rainfall for continuous hydrologic simulation.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 35(5), 1213–1221.
Erdman, J. (2016). “18 major flood events have hit Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas since March 2015.” ⟨https://weather.com/storms/severe/news/flood-fatigue-2015-2016-texas-louisiana-oklahoma⟩ (Aug. 16, 2016).
Espinet, X., Schweikert, A., and Chinowsky, P. (2015). “Robust prioritization framework for transport infrastructure adaptation investments under uncertainty of climate change.” J. Risk Uncertainty Eng. Syst. Part A: Civil Eng., E4015001.
Eyring, V., et al. (2016). “Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization.” Geosci. Model Dev., 9(5), 1937–1958.
Faturechi, R., and Miller-Hooks, E. (2015). “Measuring the performance of transportation infrastructure systems in disasters: A comprehensive review.” J. Infrastruct. Syst., 4014025.
Flato, G., et al. (2013). “Evaluation of climate models.” Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Fifth Assessment Rep. of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Forsee, W., and Ahmad, S. (2011). “Evaluating urban storm-water infrastructure design in response to projected climate change.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 865–873.
Fowler, H. J., Blenkinsop, S., and Tebaldi, C. (2007). “Linking climate change modelling to impacts studies: Recent advances in downscaling techniques for hydrological modelling.” Int. J. Climatol., 27(12), 1547–1578.
Framework Convention on Climate Change. (2015). “Adoption of the Paris agreement.” ⟨https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf⟩.
Gleckler, P. J., Taylor, K. E., and Doutriaux, C. (2008). “Performance metrics for climate models.” J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 113(D6).
Great Lakes—Upper Mississippi River Board of State and Provincial Public Health and Environmental Managers. (2014). “Recommended standards for wastewater facilities: Policies for the design, review, and approval of plans and specifications for wastewater collection and treatment facilities.” Health Research, Inc., Albany, NY.
Groves, D. G., and Lempert, R. J. (2007). “A new analytic method for finding policy-relevant scenarios.” Global Environ. Change, 17(1), 73–85.
Gudmundsson, L., Bremnes, J. B., Haugen, J. E., and Engen-Skaugen, T. (2012). “Technical note: Downscaling RCM precipitation to the station scale using statistical transformations—A comparison of methods.” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 16(9), 3383–3390.
Hall, A. (2014). “Projecting regional change” Science, 346(6216), 1461–1462.
Hallegatte, S. (2009). “Strategies to adapt to an uncertain climate change.” Traditional Peoples Clim. Change, 19(2), 240–247.
Hallegatte, S. (2014). “Decision making for disaster risk management in a changing climate.” Nat. Disasters Clim. Change, 177–194.
Hassanzadeh, E., Nazemi, A., and Elshorbagy, A. (2014). “Quantile-based downscaling of precipitation using genetic programming: Application to IDF curves in Saskatoon.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 943–955.
Hawkins, E., and Sutton, R. (2011). “The potential to narrow uncertainty in projections of regional precipitation change.” Clim. Dyn., 37(1), 407–418.
Hostetler, S. W., Alder, J. R., and Allan, A. M. (2011). “Dynamically downscaled climate simulations over North America: Methods, evaluation, and supporting documentation for users.” U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA.
Houghton, J. T., et al. (2001). “Climate change 2001: The scientific basis.” Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Rep. of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Hydrometeorological Design Studies Center. (2016). “Current NWS precipitation frequency (PF) documents.” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). (2012). “List of major IPCC reports: Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation.”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). (2014). “Climate change 2014: Impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part A: Global and sectoral aspects.”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
Katz, R. W. (2013). “Statistical methods for nonstationary extremes.” Extremes changing climate, Springer, Netherlands, 15–37.
Khan, M. S., Coulibaly, P., and Dibike, Y. (2006). “Uncertainty analysis of statistical downscaling methods.” J. Hydrol., 319(1–4), 357–382.
Kilgore, R. T., Herrmann, G. R., Thomas, W. O., Jr., and Thompson, D. B. (2016). “Highways in the river environment—Floodplains, extreme events, risk, and resilience.”, 2nd Ed., Federal Highway Administration.
Kilsby, C. G., et al. (2007). “A daily weather generator for use in climate change studies.” Environ. Modell. Software, 22(12), 1705–1719.
Kirtman, B., et al. (2013). “Near-term climate change: Projections and predictability.”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 953–1028.
Knutti, R., Furrer, R., Tebaldi, C., Cermak, J., and Meehl, G. A. (2010). “Challenges in combining projections from multiple climate models.” J. Clim., 23(10), 2739–2758.
Kuo, C. C., Gan, T. Y., and Gizaw, M. (2015). “Potential impact of climate change on intensity duration frequency curves of central Alberta.” Climatic Change, 1–15.
Laflamme, E. M., Linder, E., and Pan, Y. (2016). “Statistical downscaling of regional climate model output to achieve projections of precipitation extremes.” Weather Clim. Extremes, 12(Jun), 15–23.
Lempert, R. (2013). “Scenarios that illuminate vulnerabilities and robust responses.” Clim. Change, 117(4), 627–646.
Mailhot, A., and Duchesne, S. (2010). “Design criteria of urban drainage infrastructures under climate change.” J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage., 201–208.
Maurer, E. P., Brekke, L., Pruitt, T., and Duffy, P. P. (2007). “Fine-resolution climate projections enhance regional climate change impact studies.” Eos. Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 88(47), 504.
McCuen, R. H. (2005). Hydrologic analysis and design, 3rd Ed., Pearson Prentice Hall, NJ.
McGuffie, K., and Henderson-Sellers, A. (2001). “Forty years of numerical climate modelling.” Int. J. Climatol., 21(9), 1067–1109.
Mearns, L. (2008). “Collaborative research the North American regional climate change assessment program (NARCCAP): Using multiple GCMs and RCMs to simulate future climates and their uncertainty.” ⟨http://www.narccap.ucar.edu/doc/about/Project_summary.pdf⟩.
Mearns, L. O., et al. (2013). “The development of North America CORDEX.” ⟨https://na-cordex.org⟩ (Dec. 12, 2013).
Milly, P. C. D., et al. (2008). “Stationarity is dead: Whither water management?” Sci., 319(5863), 573–574.
Mirhosseini, G., Srivastava, P., and Stefanova, L. (2013). “The impact of climate change on rainfall intensity-duration–frequency (IDF) curves in Alabama.” Reg. Environ. Change, 13(S1), 25–33.
Moss, R. H., et al. (2013). “Hell and high water: Practice-relevant adaptation science.” Sci., 342(6159), 696–698.
Mote, P., Brekke, L., Duffy, P. B., and Maurer, E. (2011). “Guidelines for constructing climate scenarios.” Eos, 92(31), 257–258.
Murphy, J. (1999). “An evaluation of statistical and dynamical techniques for downscaling local climate.” J. Climate, 12(8), 2256–2284.
Musau, J., Sang, J., and Gathenya, J. (2013). “General circulation models (GCMs) downscaling techniques and uncertainty modeling for climate change impact assessment.” Proc., 2013 Mechanical Engineering Conf. on Sustainable Research and Innovation, Vol. 5, JKUAT, Nairobi, Kenya.
Nakicenvoic, N., et al. (2000). IPCC Special Rep. on Emissions Scenarios, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). (2016). “National centers for environmental information.” ⟨http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/⟩ (Oct. 17, 2016).
Olsen, J., ed. (2015). “Adapting infrastructure and civil engineering practice to a changing climate.” Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate, ASCE, Reston, VA.
Onof, C., and Arnbjerg-Nielsen, K. (2009). “Quantification of anticipated future changes in high resolution design rainfall for urban areas.” Int. Workshop Precipitation Urban Areas, 92(3), 350–363.
PennDOT (Pennsylvania Department of Transportation). (2011). “Chapter 7, Appendix A: Field manual for Pennsylvania design rainfall intensity charts from NOAA Atlas 14 version 3 data.” PennDOT drainage manual, 2010 Ed., Pennsylvania Dept. of Transportation, Harrisburg, PA, 1–40.
Pierce, D. W., Barnett, T. P., Santer, B. D., and Gleckler, P. J. (2009). “Selecting global climate models for regional climate change studies.” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 106(21), 8441–8446.
Prudhomme, C., and Davies, H. (2009). “Assessing uncertainties in climate change impact analyses on the river flow regimes in the UK. Part 1: Baseline climate.” Clim. Change, 93(1), 177–195.
Prudhomme, C., Reynard, N., and Crooks, S. (2002). “Downscaling of global climate models for flood frequency analysis: Where are we now?” Hydrol. Processes, 16(6), 1137–1150.
Reanalysis.org. (2016). “Advancing reanalysis.” CIRES at Univ. of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO.
Reichler, T., and Kim, J. (2008). “How well do coupled models simulate today’s climate?” Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 89(3), 303–311.
Shahabul Alam, M., and Elshorbagy, A. (2015). “Quantification of the climate change-induced variations in intensity–duration–frequency curves in the Canadian prairies.” J. Hydrol., 527(August), 990–1005.
Stoner, A. M., Hayhoe, K., Yang, X., and Wuebbles, D. J. (2013). “An asynchronous regional regression model for statistical downscaling of daily climate variables.” Int. J. Climatol., 33(11), 2473–2494.
Sun, X., and Barros, A. P. (2014). “High resolution simulation of Tropical Storm Ivan (2004) in the southern Appalachians: Role of planetary boundary-layer schemes and cumulus parametrization.” Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 140(683), 1847–1865.
Taylor, K. E., Stouffer, R. J., and Meehl, G. A. (2012). “An Overview of CMIP5 and the experiment design.” Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 93(4), 485–498.
USEPA. (2015). “EPA storm water management model (version 5.1).” ⟨http://www.epa.gov/water-research/storm-water-management-model-swmm⟩ (Feb. 11, 2016).
Van Vuuren, D. P., et al. (2011). “The representative concentration pathways: An overview.” Clim. Change, 109(1–2), 5–31.
Visser, H., and Petersen, A. C. (2012). “Inferences on weather extremes and weather-related disasters: A review of statistical methods.” Clim. Past, 8(1), 265–286.
Walsh, J. D., Wuebbles, K., and Kossin, J. (2014). “Our changing climate. Climate change impacts in the United States.” Chapter 2, Third national climate assessment, U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, 19–67.
Wehner, M. F. (2013). “Very extreme seasonal precipitation in the NARCCAP ensemble: Model performance and projections.” Clim. Dyn., 40(1–2), 59–80.
Wilks, D. S., and Wilby, R. L. (1999). “The weather generation game: A review of stochastic weather models.” Prog. Phys. Geogr., 23(3), 329–357.
Willems, P., et al. (2013). “Climate change impacts on rainfall extremes and urban drainage: A state-of-the-art review.” World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2013: Showcasing the Future, ASCE, Reston, VA, 1131–1135.
Wood, A. W., Leung, L. R., Sridhar, V., and Lettenmaier, D. P. (2004). “Hydrologic implications of dynamical and statistical approaches to downscaling climate model outputs.” Clim. Change, 62(1–3), 189–216.
Wood, S. J., Jones, D. A., and Moore, R. J. (2000). “Static and dynamic calibration of radar data for hydrological use.” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 4(4), 545–554.
Wuebbles, D., et al. (2014). “CMIP5 climate model analyses: Climate extremes in the United States.” Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 95(4), 571–583.
Xu, C.-Y. (1999). “From GCMs to river flow: A review of downscaling methods and hydrologic modelling approaches.” Prog. Phys. Geogr., 23(2), 229–249.
Zender, C., Butowsky, H., and Wang, W. (2016). “Welcome to the netCDF operator (NCO) site.” ⟨http://nco.sourceforge.net/⟩.
Zhu, J. (2013). “Impact of climate change on extreme rainfall across the United States.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 1301–1309.
Zhu, J., Stone, M. C., and Forsee, W. (2012). “Analysis of potential impacts of climate change on intensity-duration–frequency (IDF) relationships for six regions in the United States.” J. Water Clim. Change, 3(3), 185–196.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 23 • Issue 4 • December 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 30, 2016
Accepted: Mar 20, 2017
Published online: Jul 12, 2017
Published in print: Dec 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Dec 12, 2017
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.