Projects

Project Dates: 09/01/2011-8/31/2013 extended to 8/31/2014 (COMPLETE)
Funding Agency: NOAA SARP CPO

Project Lead:
Wendy Dimbero Graham

Project Participants:
Keith Talbert Ingram
Tracy Anne Irani

Additional Participants:
Sebastian Galindo
Christopher Martinez
Vasu Misra, FSU
Lisette Staal, UF Water Institute

The University of Florida Water Institute, Florida State University and the Southeast Climate Consortium, along with representatives from seven major public water supply utilities and three Water Management Districts in Florida, propose to develop and implement a collaborative Working Group to increase the regional relevance and usability of climate and sea level rise data and tools for the specific needs of water suppliers and resources managers in Florida. The Florida Water and Climate Alliance (FloridaWCA) Working Group will operate as a learning and collaboration platform and will employ participatory methods and a knowledge management framework to promote shared knowledge, data, models and decision-making tools.

The goal of this project is to increase the regional relevance and usability of climate and sea level rise data and tools for the specific needs of water suppliers and resources managers in Florida. Specific objectives are to:

• Develop a collaborative “Working Group”
• Identify the appropriate spatio-temporal scales, climatic indices, and events that drive utilities’ decisions
• Evaluate the practical applicability of current climate data, models, tools at these scales
• Evaluate the usefulness of these data for minimizing current and future risks associated with climate in decision making processes.

Project Documents:

• Executive Advisory Committee Meeting Notes (November 2011)
• Technical Working Group “Roadmaps” (May 2012):
  • Seasonal Scale Forecasts;
  • Long-term Climate Scenarios;
  • Sea Level Rise
• Annual Report Year 1
• Annual Report Year 2
• Annual Report Year 3

Project Dates: 10/01/2012-06/31/2014 (COMPLETE)
Funding Agency: NOAA SARP CPO

Project Lead:
Wendy Dimbero Graham

Project Participants:
Christopher Martinez

Additional Participants:
Alison Adams, Tampa Bay Water 
Ronnie Best, USGS 
Jessica Bolson, SECC, UF 
Ben Kirtman, U Miami 
Vasu Misra, FSU 
Kevin Morris, MRWSA
Louis Murray, USGS
Jayantha Obeysekera, SFWMD 
Lisette Staal, UF Water Institute

The overall goal of this project is to improve the regional relevance of seasonal climate forecasts and increase their usability for multiple water managers in Florida to minimize short-term operational risks for water supply as well as ecosystem restoration.

The specific objectives of this project are to:

• Evaluate of the skill of the large-scale NMME seasonal climate predictions (temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, humidity, wind speed) on a daily basis over all seasons and over a common grid across the Southeast US. We will use the NMME set of seasonal hindcasts, which are from seven different global coupled ocean-atmosphere models.

• Statistical downscaling of the NMME forecasts to the watershed scale and evaluate the skill of these seasonal predictions over three specific domains: Peace River Manasota Regional Water Supply Authority, Tampa Bay Water and the South Florida Water Management District.

• Execution of a comparative study across three organizations of the benefits and limitations of using seasonal climate forecasts for their operational needs using the following techniques: Interviews, Qualitative focus groups, Cross organizational comparisons and analysis

Project Documents:

• Annual Report Year 1
• Annual Report Year 2

Project Dates: 06/2019 - 05/2022, extended to 06/2023 (COMPLETE)
Funding Agency: NASA

Project Lead:
Christopher Martinez (final report by Jasmeet Judge)

Project Participants:
Tracy Irani, Jasmeet Judge, Karen Schlatter (University of Florida), Vasu Misra (Florida State University), Tirusew Asefa (Tampa Bay Water) and Kevin Morris (Peace River Manasota Regional Water Supply Authority)

The goal of this project was to improve water allocation and storage decisions by public water utilities through the development of a real-time monitoring product and integration of high (10-km) resolution regional seasonal forecasts centered over Florida. The real-time monitoring product uses NASA Earth science products to anticipate the likelihood of early or late onsite/demise of seasons in peninsular Florida (which has very distinct wet and dry seasons). Customized dynamical seasonal climate forecasts are provided to end-users that incorporate multiple NASA satellite- and model-based products. An extensive set of retrospective forecasts (reforecasts) from 2000-present for the winter (dry) season was produced as part of this project. They serve to develop robust bias correction of the forecasts, which has been previously demonstrated by the investigators to be critical for their effective use in hydrologic applications.

This work is innovative in that:

1. It was designed, proposed, and implemented by an established stakeholder-scientist partnership.
2. For the first time, a regional climate model at 10km spatial resolution was deployed for Florida to conduct real-time seasonal forecasts for the winter season. The results of this exercise clearly showed the benefits of high resolution in terms of the fidelity of the seasonal forecasts of precipitation.
3. Forecasts provide derived variables at a desired frequency, lead time, and resolution that are relevant to hydrologic applications and not currently available from operational centers.
4. The real-time monitoring of the evolution of the wet season was notable for its reliability of the seasonal outlook. When most numerical climate models display poor seasonal prediction skill in the wet season owing to the overwhelming contribution of small-scale thunderstorms to the seasonal rainfall, the approach of real-time monitoring of the onset of the wet season to provide outlook of the forthcoming season is a good alternative.
5. The real-time monitoring of the evolution of the wet season used the IMERG -12h latency product of NASA and demonstrated its efficacy in providing credible seasonal outlook of the rainy season at the granularity of the water management districts of Florida.

Seasonal forecasts products were integrated into decision support tools used by Tampa Bay Water and the Peace River Manasota Regional Water Supply Authority and were found to provide improved forecasts compared to climate prediction center outlooks. These utility partners, as members of the Florida Water and Climate Alliance (FloridaWCA), have demonstrated sustained and continuing interest in integrating improved forecast products into their decision making tools. This project leverages the established stakeholder-scientist network of FloridaWCA to examine the efficacy of its members’ decision making processes with respect to adoption of the project’s forecasting and decision support products. As the forecasts, integrated into stakeholder models, have been shown to provide improved skill compared to previously available forecasts, our utility partners will be better able to rotate between water sources (e.g. one utility uses groundwater, surface water, and desalinated water and another uses surface water and aquifer storage and recovery) in anticipation of forecasted drought conditions as well as forecasted wetter than normal conditions.

Project Outputs:

• Customized seasonal forecasts for public water utilities in Florida
• Customized data products that improve current seasonal source allocation (environmental and cost implications) and water shortage risk management tools.
• Seasonal streamflow forecasts using our forecasts with higher skill compared to using lagged observations or CPC/ENSO outlook
• Improved ASR recovery operations due to improved forecasts that are location-specific
• Development of the next generation of talent through training in climate modeling including delivering time sensitive climate forecast products in an operational setting

Project Documents:

• Year 1 Annual Report
• Final Report