SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS AS A GUIDE FOR ASSESSING AND MANAGING THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON WATER RESOURCES

摘要

Climate change is often considered a problem of the future. In many areas, however, and particularly for managers making long term, capital intensive decisions about water infrastructure, climate change is already an immediate concern. Water and watershed managers can better assess their exposure to climate related risks by understanding the hydrologic sensitivity of key management goals to a wide range of plausible climatic conditions and events. This understanding also can guide the development of management strategies and practices to reduce the likelihood of future harm. New computational tools make such analyses easier by automating modeling tasks and providing easier access to relevant information. These tools are not revolutionary, but make an incremental contribution to help water managers reduce risk by better incorporating information about climate variability and change into their decision making process.