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[Seminar] CIRCLE Distinguished Lecture Series: Increasing Resilience to Climate Extremes with Emphasis on Major Urban Areas by Dr. Bridget R. Scanlon
Date: 23/08/2022 Addr:ZOOM
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ABSTRACT: Increasing climate extremes, including droughts and floods, is challenging for water resource managers. There have been many recent examples for cities approaching Day Zero in terms of water because of long-term droughts, most notably Cape Town (4.6 million people) and Sao Paulo (12.3 million). The objective of our studies is better understand these cycles of extremes and assess different approaches to make urban areas more resilient to climate extremes. Our work includes large scale analysis of water storage using GRACE satellites and linkages to climate teleconnections (e.g., El Nino Southern Oscillation, Indian Ocean Dipole, North Atlantic Oscillation). We also examined water strategies in various cities to enhance system resilience by reducing water demand, increasing supplies, storing more water, and transporting water. For example, we show that Cape Town and Sao Paulo were almost 100% reliant on surface reservoir storage during the drought. In addition to conserving water during the drought in both regions, Cape Town increased water supplies by developing groundwater resources and adding temporary seawater desalination. Municipal wastewater reuse is being considered in many cities to provide a drought free water resource. The South to North Water Transfer Project in China provides an example of large-scale transport of water from the humid south (Yangtze River) to the arid North, including Beijing (population 21 million). In addition to traditional surface water resources, urban areas are exploring opportunities to better manage these reservoirs and remove water prior to floods to store in nearby depleted aquifers, as in California. Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations will become increasingly important in the future. Enhancing the resilience of these urban areas is to develop a portfolio of options to manage the extremes; however, the tradeoffs of developing many options need to be considered, including economics and energy consumption with related greenhouse gases. Projected increases in climate extremes with climate change highlights the importance of increasing the resilience of large urban areas to these extremes to provide reliable water resources.

 

BIO: Bridget Scanlon is a Senior Research Scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin. Her degrees are in Geology with a focus on hydrogeology with a B.A. Mod. from Trinity College, Dublin (1980); M.Sc. from the Univ. of Alabama (1983), and Ph.D. from the Univ. of Kentucky (1985). She has worked at the Univ. of Texas since 1987. Her current research focuses on various aspects of water resources, including global assessments using satellites and mod-eling, management related to climate extremes, and water energy interdependence. She serves an Associate Editor for Water Resources Research and Environmental Research Letters and has authored ~ or co-authored ~170 publications. Dr. Scanlon is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America and a member of the National Academy of Engi-neering.

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