Welcome to the Carpe Diem West Academy Discussion Forum. This feature allows Academy users to share information, thoughts, questions and suggestions with each other creating virtual conversations between water manager on water-climate issues in the American West. We hope this feature facilitates the richessness of peer-to-peer learning and interaction and creates a venue to build relationships and connections.
Data Tools
ADAPT allows users to input data to assess their community’s vulnerabilities, choose preparedness goals, and develop and prioritize actions. Need to become an ICLEI member.
The National Water Program (EPA) recently developed a climate assessment tool within the BASINS decision support system (BASINS CAT). BASINS CAT provides a capability to create climate change scenarios to assess the sensitivity of hydrologic and water quality endpoints to climate change using the BASINS HSPF watershed model.
FEMA has developed Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) software to facilitate the process of preparing a BCA. Using FEMA-approved BCA software will ensure that the calculations are prepared in accordance with OMB Circular A-94, Guidelines and Discount Rates for Benefit-Cost Analysis of Federal Programs and FEMA's standardized methodologies.
CE2 was developed by the Pacific Institute and helps to evaluate the economic desirability of water conservation and efficiency measures as well as explore how costs and benefits can be shared among customers, water utilities, and other entities.
The Climate Impacts Group (CIG) recently examined a select subset of global simulation models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 4 (IPCC AR4), driven by two greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (B1 and A1B), and produced updated scenarios of future climate for the PNW.
The joint CCl/CLIVAR/JCOMM Expert Team (ET) on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) has a mandate to address the need for the objective measurement and characterization of climate variability and change by providing international coordination and helping organizing collaboration on climate change detection and indices relevant to climate change detection, and by encouraging the comparison of modeled data and observations.
This is a suite of tools designed at PCMDI for the analysis and display of GCM climate data.
The Climate Wizard enables you to: 1) view historic temperature and rainfall maps for anywhere in the world; 2) view state-of-the-art future predictions of temperature and rainfall around the world; 3) view and download climate change maps in a few easy steps.
This site contains raw data from dynamical downscaling. It's aimed at scientists rather than the general public, though anyone is welcome to view the data.
Data from GCM runs for IPCC AR5. Earth System Grid gateway hosted by the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI). Note that CMIP5 (Climate Model Intercomparison Project) is next generation after CMIP3.
The Coastal County Snapshots tool provides local officials with a quick look at a county’s demographics, infrastructure, and environment within the flood zone. A map and pull-down menus let users pick the county of interest, and a report is provided for download that can be saved or printed.
The Data Basin Aquatic Conservation Center centralizes datasets and findings related to aquatic ecosystems. Tools are provided to visualize, analyze, and communicate about vulnerabilities, trends or predicted future scenarios at local and regional scales.
The Climate Center is a component of Data Basin that specializes in creating and disseminating critical datasets, tools, and networks needed to address changes related to climate. The Data Basin Climate Center allows you to publish existing climate datasets and analyses, review new research on the potential patterns and impacts of a changing climate, and connect with people with datasets, expertise, or similar interests.
This data tool was developed by a team of government agencies and universities and contains statistically downscaled data at a 1/8 degree spatial resolution. It was derived from climate projections referenced in IPCC AR4. Data includes temperature, precipitation and hydrologic conditions. Check out the tutorial tab on their site for a demonstration on custom data retrieval methods.
CREAT allows users to evaluate potential impacts of climate change on their utility and to evaluate adaptation options to address these impacts using both traditional risk assessment and scenario-based decision making. The tool guides users through identifying threats based on regional differences in climate change projections and designing adaptation plans based on the types of threats being considered. Following assessment, CREAT provides a series of risk reduction and cost reports that will allow the user to evaluate various adaptation options as part of long-term planning.
GanttProject is a cross-platform desktop tool for project scheduling and management. It runs on Windows, Linux and MacOSX, it is free and its code is opensource. It can 1) create work breakdown structure, draw dependencies, define milestones; 2) assign human resources to work on tasks, see their allocation on the Resource Load chart; 3) save charts as PNG images, generate PDF and HTML reports; 4) import projects from and export them to Microsoft Project formats. Export to spreadsheets with CSV; and 5) share projects with your colleagues using WebDAV
The GLUE package provides tools for sensitivity analysis and uncertainty estimation using the results of Monte Carlo simulations.
Downscaled and debiased, global, 21st-century climate scenarios from Conservation International to accommodate the immediate demand for multiple, fine resolution climate projections and enable and enhance efforts implement adaptation and mitigation measures in response to climate change. Spatial resolution is ~4km.
This tool aids in making decisions about habitat conservation, restoration, and land use planning. The program allows users to easily test various ideas and "what if" scenarios on the fly, making it the perfect tool to use in a group setting.
The Climate Impacts Group (CIG) worked with several prominent water management agencies in the Pacific Northwest to develop hydrologic climate change scenarios for approximately 300 streamflow locations in the Columbia River basin and selected coastal drainages west of the Cascades.
This tool was developed by the Natural Capital Project. It was designed to better align ecosystem conservation with economic forces and is comprised of a modeling suite that quantifies and maps the values of environmental services. The modeling suite is best suited for analyses of multiple services and multiple objectives. The current models, which require relatively little data input, can identify areas where investment may enhance human well-being and nature. This tool requires that the User have ESRI ArcGIS software.
This tool allows a user to investigate the historical variability of precipitation and temperature at various time scales (interannual, decadal, and long-term linear trend) over the 20th century near a user-selected location.
Briefly, IWR Planning Suite assists with plan formulation by combining user-defined solutions to planning problems and calculating the effects of each combination, or "plan." The program can assist with plan comparison by conducting cost effectiveness and incremental cost analyses, identifying the plans which are best financial investments and displaying the effects of each on a range of decision variables.
LEAP is an integrated modeling tool that can be used to track energy consumption, production and resource extraction in all sectors of an economy. It can be used to account for both energy sector and non-energy sector greenhouse gas (GHG) emission sources and sinks. In addition to tracking GHGs, LEAP can also be used to analyze emissions of local and regional air pollutants, making it well-suited to studies of the climate co-benefits of local air pollution reduction.
MAGICC and SCENGEN are a coupled software package that is interactive, allowing users to investigate not only future climate change but also its uncertainties at both the global-mean and regional levels. MAGICC, Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change, simulates future climate at the global mean level by varying emission levels, future time period, and/or by specifying which General Circulation Models are used. SCENGEN, Regional Climate Scenario Generator, then uses MAGICC outputs to simulate future climate at a regional scale. The current version downscales climate (temperature, precipitation or mean sea level change) to a 2.5x2.5 deg grid. The output from MAGICC/SCENGEN allows for an integrated analysis of climate change uncertainties and can generate probabilities of temperature and precipitation change above a specified threshold.
"MODSIM-DSS is a generic river basin management decision support system for developing basin-wide strategies for short-term water management, long-term operational planning, and drought/climate change contingency planning."
This modeling approach uses thermograph records and a simple set of geomorphic predictor variables derived from digital elevation models (DEM). A multiple regression model and GIS are used to predict stream temperatures for individual reaches throughout a river network.
Planners, resource managers, scientists, and conservationists can use NatureServe Vista to: conduct conservation planning and assessments; integrate conservation values with other planning and assessment; activities, such as land use, transportation, energy, natural resource, and ecosystem-based management; evaluate, create, implement, and monitor land use and resource management scenarios designed to achieve conservation goals within existing economic, social, and political contexts.
The State of the Climate Report is a collection of monthly summaries recapping climate-related occurrences on both a global and national scale.
Use the Nonpoint-Source Pollution and Erosion Comparison Tool (N-SPECT) to investigate potential water quality impacts from development, other land uses, and climate change.
Data and graphs in excel spreadsheet showing annual and seasonal projections for temperature and precipitation. Projections are from a subset of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 4 (IPCC AR4) global climate models.
RHESSys is a GIS-based, hydro-ecological modeling framework designed to simulate carbon, water and nutrient fluxes. RHESSys combines both a set of physically based process models and a methodology for partitioning and parameterizing the landscape.
The Extremes Toolkit is an interactive program for analyzing extreme value data using the R statistical programming language. A graphical user interface is provided, so a knowledge of R is not necessarily required. The toolkit comes with a tutorial that explains how the toolkit can be used to treat weather and climate extremes in a realistic manner.
This model was developed for predictions across the interior Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest. The model predicts the distribution of thermally suitable habitat for bull trout by incorporating air temperature, elevation, latitude, and longitude.
This online tool, from the Office of the Washington State Climatologist, allows the user to analyze temperature, precipitation and snow water equivalent data for the pacific northwest. Focus is on the PNW.
This site walks the user through various excel functions that could be used for analyzing data trends. Examples show climate variables but hydrological variables could be substituted by the user.
VIC is a macroscale hydrologic model that solves full water and energy balances.
This data was developed from climate scenarios used in the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, specifically the A1B and the A2 SRES (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) scenarios as modeled by these climate models: CGCM, CSIRO, and MIROC. The monthly change factors were developed from global model output and downscaled to the 5 arc minute (~8 km) spatial grid using ANUSPLIN.
This data was developed from the SRES (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) scenario B2 used in the Third Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, specifically as modeled by these climate models: GCGM2 (Climate Centre for Modelling and Analysis), CSIRO MK2 (Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), and HadCM3 (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research UK). The monthly change factors were developed from global model output and downscaled to the 5 arc minute (~8 km) spatial grid using ANUSPLIN following the work of Price et al. (2004).
This data was developed from climate scenarios used in the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, specifically the A1B and the A2 SRES (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) scenarios as modeled by these climate models: CGCM, CSIRO, and MIROC. The monthly change factors were developed from global model output and downscaled to the 5 arc minute spatial grid using ANUSPLIN.
This data was developed from the SRES (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) climate scenario B2 used in the Third Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as modeled by these climate models: GCGM2 (Climate Centre for Modelling and Analysis), CSIRO MK2 (Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), and HadCM3 (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research UK). The monthly change factors were developed from global model output and downscaled to the 5 arc minute spatial grid using ANUSPLIN following the work of Price et al. (2004)
Allocation of limited water resources between agricultural, municipal and environmental uses now requires the full integration of supply, demand, water quality and ecological considerations. The Water Evaluation and Planning system, or WEAP, aims to incorporate these issues into a practical yet robust tool for integrated water resources planning.
To give water managers a better understanding of the relationship between water management decisions, energy consumption, and air quality the Pacific Institute has created two Water to Air Models. One model is for urban water districts and the other for agricultural districts.
XMind is an open source brainstorming and mind mapping software tool. The program is intended to assist users in capturing ideas, organizing various charts, and share them with collaboration. It supports mind maps, Ishikawa diagrams (also called fishbone diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams), tree diagrams, organization charts, and spreadsheets. It can be used for knowledge management, meeting minutes, task management, and GTD.
Data tools include tools that enable either the analysis and/or visualization of data. These tools also include data related to climate change.
Your Guide. Your Water. Your Decision.
"Our customizable guide can help you move local policymakers from awareness to action." This tool was created by Source Water Collaborative, an organization comprised of federal, state and local partners. The fact sheet, or guide, is designed to effectively deliver a lot of information in a small space. It takes only a couple of minutes to create once you have all your content lined up.
Learn More
