Climate Adaptation Informatics: Water Stress on Power Production

Resilience to nonstationarity and deep uncertainty is a prerequisite to water security. Stakeholder planning horizons typically extend to about 30 years in water quantity or quality management, flood or drought hazard resilience, or the water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus. Projections of stressors, such as population, land use, stability assumptions of technologies, infrastructures, and organizations, are relatively more credible at the nearer term. However, compared to longer lead times of mid- to end-century and beyond, climate adaptation challenges are more acute. Over 30-year horizons, the degree of nonstationarity is comparable to the overall uncertainty, which in turn is dominated by natural variability, especially at higher space-time resolutions. A case study with power production at risk in the US suggests that informed decisions could be possible despite nonstationarity and deep uncertainty.