Webinar: Future Climate-Driven Drought Challenges for Texas

The webinar will take place March 9, 2021 at 12:00 PM CST for 1 PDH.

>> Register now for this ASCE Texas Section’s Technical Webinar.

Long-range water planning is complicated by factors that are rapidly changing in the 21st century, including climate. Climate models are robust in projecting drying of summer-season soil moisture and decreasing reservoir supplies for both the eastern and western portions of Texas during the 21st century. Further, projections indicate drier conditions during the latter half of the 21st century than the most arid centuries of the last 1,000 years.  But just knowing “droughts will get worse” doesn’t really facilitate planning for key stakeholder groups: agricultural producers, large surface water suppliers, small groundwater management districts, and regional water planning districts. While stakeholders value the quantitative capability of climate model outputs, more specific climate-related information is needed to better support resilience planning across multiple stakeholder groups, and the specific information needed differs across and even within these stakeholder groups. New suites of tools could provide necessary capacity for both short and long-term, stakeholder-specific adaptive planning.

Speaker

John Nielsen-Gammon has been on the faculty at Texas A&M University since 1991.  He is currently a Regents Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and also serves as the Texas State Climatologist.  He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a Ph.D. there in 1990.  He does research on various types of extreme weather from droughts to floods, as well as air pollution and computer modeling.  As Texas State Climatologist, he helps the State of Texas make the best possible use of weather and climate information, through applied research, outreach, and service on state-level committees.   He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society.