Joint Front Range Climate Change Study SOW

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SECTION I BACKGROUND GENERAL PROJECT DESCRIPTION Introduction Metropolitan water providers along Colorado's Front Range are concerned about the impact climate change may have on their future water supply availability. Several Front Range providers are working together to develop a study to provide the education, tools, and methodology necessary to examine the possible effects on several common watersheds. This project, called the Joint Front Range Climate Change Vulnerability Study, is designed to enable entities that obtain their water supplies from the upper Colorado, South Platte, Arkansas, Cache la Poudre, St. Vrain, Boulder Creek, and Big Thompson River Basins to examine potential effects climate change may have on those supplies. A joint project allows for the pooling of financial and human resources for optimal benefits. Additional expert resources will be utilized through the help of the Western Water Assessment (WWA) and the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB). This unified approach is intended to help Colorado water providers communicate with their customers and the media cohesively by working with the same hydrometeorological data and using the same methods and climate change scenarios. Lessons learned from this unified approach can be used to encourage and establish other regional efforts in Colorado and possibly other parts of the country. The study will focus on the development of future naturalized streamflow data using selected climate change scenarios for the providers' watersheds. Each provider can use these future streamflow scenarios in conjunction with their water rights allocation assumptions to estimate the impacts of various climate change scenarios on their water supply. Throughout this process each participant will have the opportunity to: • learn about climate variables and modeling (including global climate models (GCMs), emissions scenarios, and downscaling approaches) through an educational session with the WWA and determine variables that will be considered in the study, • learn about different hydrology models calibrated for a few of the Colorado river basins (the two models being considered include the WEAP model with David Yates of NCAR, and the Sacramento model with Riverside Technology), • learn the procedure required for investigating each method (this will be beneficial as climate information and techniques become more refined), • learn how to correctly interpret the study results with guidance from WWA, and • work with other providers using the same watersheds to establish an accepted set of historic naturalized streamflow data