Unprecedented drought challenges for Texas water resources in a changing
climate: what do researchers and stakeholders need to know?
Abstract
Long-range water planning is complicated by factors that are rapidly
changing in the 21st century, including climate, population, and water
use. Here, we analyze climate factors and drought projections for Texas
as an example of a diverse society straddling an aridity gradient to
examine how the projections can best serve water stakeholder needs. We
find that 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 even the most arid centuries of the last 1,000
years that included megadroughts. To illustrate how accounting for
drought non-stationarity may increase water resiliency, we consider
generalized case studies involving four key stakeholder groups:
agricultural producers, large surface water suppliers, small groundwater
management districts, and regional water planning districts. We also
examine an example of customized climate information being used as input
to long-range water planning. We find that while stakeholders value the
quantitative capability of climate model outputs, more specific
climate-related information better supports resilience planning across
multiple stakeholder groups. New suites of tools could provide necessary
capacity for both short and long-term, stakeholder-specific adaptive
planning.