Uncertainty decomposition to understand the influence of water systems
model error in climate vulnerability assessments
Abstract
Climate vulnerability assessments rely on water infrastructure system
models that imperfectly predict performance metrics under ensembles of
future scenarios. There is a benefit to reduced complexity system
representations to support these assessments, especially when large
ensembles are used to better characterize future uncertainties. An
important question is whether the total uncertainty in the output
metrics is primarily attributable to the climate ensemble or to the
systems model itself. Here we develop a method to address this question
by combining time series error models of performance metrics with
time-varying Sobol sensitivity analysis. The method is applied to a
reduced complexity multi-reservoir systems model of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin River Basin in California to demonstrate the decomposition of
flood risk and water supply uncertainties under an ensemble of climate
change scenarios. The results show that the contribution of systems
model error to total uncertainty is small (~5-15%)
relative to climate based uncertainties. This indicates that the reduced
complexity systems model is sufficiently accurate for use in the context
of the vulnerability assessment. We also observe that climate
uncertainty is dominated by the choice of GCM and its interactive
effects with the representative concentration pathway (RCP), rather than
the RCP alone. This observation has implications for how climate
vulnerabilities should be interpreted.