Abstracts on Global Climate Change

Droughts constitute one of the most important factors affecting the design and operation of water resources infrastructure. Hydrologists ascertain their duration, severity, and pattern of recurrence from instrumental records of precipitation or streamflow. Under suitable conditions, and with proper analysis, tree rings obtained from long living, climate sensitive species of trees can extend instrumental records of streamflow and precipitation over periods spanning several centuries. Those tree-ring “reconstructions” provide a valuable insight about climate variability and drought occurrence in the Holocene, and yield long term hydrological data useful in the design of water infrastructure. This work presents a derivation of drought risk based on a renewal model of drought recurrence, a brief review of the basic theory of tree-ring reconstructions, and a stochastic model for optimizing the design of water supply reservoirs. Examples illustrate the methodology developed in this work and the supporting role that tree-ring reconstructed streamflow can play in characterizing hydrologic variability.

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