Opinion: We should use technology to improve California’s ability to manage floods, water supplies

Kerl is the overall supervisor of the San Diego County Water Authority. Leinen is the director of Scripps Establishment of Oceanography at UC San Diego. They each stay in San Diego.

Torrential rains are periodically pounding California this winter and placing a dent in essentially the most excessive drought situations of the previous 1,200 years. Whereas that’s a aid for some 40 million residents, it’s additionally a reminder of the feast-or-famine local weather that guidelines California and creates main challenges for water managers.

Today, we rely closely on expressways of water vapor often known as atmospheric rivers. They supply about half the state’s annual precipitation and their share of water deliveries is growing as local weather change drives excessive swings in precipitation. Put merely, the twentieth century idea of dependable winter snowpacks and orderly spring runoff filling reservoirs is giving approach to all-or-nothing occasions epitomized by atmospheric rivers and more and more extreme droughts.

Apart from the plain issues created by flooding and scouring fire-ravaged landscapes, atmospheric rivers add higher challenges to many years of reservoir administration in California and throughout the West. Their growing prevalence requires new science and revolutionary administration instruments to benefit from the episodic water provides they ship.

A invoice within the state Legislature would assist guarantee California has the science and climate forecasting instruments it must play by nature’s ever-changing guidelines. Meeting Invoice 30, by Chris Ward, D-San Diego, would make breakthrough water administration know-how customary for the California Division of Water Sources, leveraging earlier and current federal investments. It will foster enhancements over time that can result in extra versatile reservoir operations sooner or later for California to take care of drought and flood.

The technique is named forecast-informed reservoir operations, and it enhances Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California Water Provide technique launched in August calling for extra reservoir storage capability to seize runoff from huge storms. The governor and Legislature have already offered funding for state water managers to combine the technique.

Because the identify implies, forecast-informed reservoir operations use climate predictions to advise dam operators about how a lot water to retain or launch from reservoirs, enhancing their capability to deal with no matter nature serves up whereas retaining as a lot water as potential in storage. A pilot program funded by the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers in Northern California confirmed water administration utilizing this technique elevated water storage by practically 20 p.c.

Whereas that method may appear apparent, the truth is that many reservoirs within the West are strictly regulated based mostly on historic averages of winter storms and spring runoff. Below current guidelines, the extremely variable rainfall from 12 months to 12 months shouldn’t be straight thought of. Complicating the issue, many present tips and practices had been developed earlier than satellites, radar and superior numerical fashions considerably improved climate forecasts.

To handle these challenges, researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Establishment of Oceanography and elsewhere developed instruments that present climate forecasters with dependable discover of atmospheric rivers every week prematurely. Advancing this analysis may have taken many years, however refined prediction merchandise have advanced in lower than 10 years with funding by the San Diego County Water Authority and different water companies statewide, together with state and federal assist.

In gentle of the speedy progress, the San Diego County Water Authority and Sonoma Water co-sponsored Meeting Invoice 30 as an revolutionary local weather adaptation technique that doesn’t require expensive reservoir infrastructure upgrades. Ward needs to be congratulated for his management in supporting next-gen water administration and flood discount efforts that can profit residents statewide.

Adapting to the brand new paradigm of climatic uncertainty and extremes would require new approaches to water administration. Fortunately, forecast-informed reservoir operations offers compelling proof that California can proceed to thrive with a mix of analysis, know-how and collaboration that sustains our financial system and high quality of life.