One-way coupling of an integrated assessment model and a water resources model: evaluation and implications of future changes over the US Midwest

An integrated model is being developed to advance our understanding of the interactions between human activities, terrestrial system and water cycle, and how system interactions will be affected by a changing climate at the regional scale. As a first step towards that goal, a global integrated assessment model including a waterdemand model is coupled offline with a land surface hydrology – routing – water resources management model. A spatial and temporal disaggregation approach is developed to project the annual regional water demand simulations into a daily time step and subbasin representation. The model demonstrated reasonable ability to represent the historical flow regulation and water supply over the Midwest (Missouri, Upper Mississippi and Ohio). Implications for the future flow regulation, water supply and supply deficit are investigated using a climate change projection with the B1 emission scenario which affects both natural flow and water demand. Over the Midwest, changes in flow regulation are mostly driven by the change in natural flow due to the limited storage capacity over the Ohio and Upper Mississippi river basins. The changes in flow and demand have a combined effect on the Missouri Summer regulated flow. The supply deficit tends to be driven by the changemore » in flow over the region. Spatial analysis demonstrates the relationship between the supply deficit and the change in demand over urban areas not along a main river or with limited storage, and over areas upstream of groundwater dependent fields with therefore overestimated demand.« less