Green Mountain Dam Climate Change

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF; Skamarock et al., 2007) model was investigated to understand its capabilities concerning its ability to model historic, large precipitation events; allow model users to maximize storm parameters; and allow model users to perturb storm parameters for climate change scenarios. Extreme storms in the vicinity of the Green Mountain Dam watershed were examined due to the orographic nature of the region and as a result of ongoing questions concerning high-elevation precipitation estimates originating from the Hydrologic Hazard Study for Green Mountain Dam. Two historical storm events that occurred in the vicinity of the Green Mountain watershed were modeled using the WRF model. The 4-6 Sept. 1970 storm event was deemed sufficient to serve as the basis for experiments for moisture maximization and climate perturbation simulations. This proof-of-concept study demonstrates that the WRF model is capable of simulating extreme storms in orographic locations within the vicinity of Green Mountain Dam. This modeling approach offers potential utility for use in model-based storm-maximization and climate-change assessment studies. The results presented in this study are considered preliminary and exploratory in nature. Running a high resolution model requires significant resources and, for the results to be robust, further improvements to the research methodology and additional applications are required. Based on the preliminary results, the WRF model is beneficial to the extreme storm analysis process needed for Dam Safety Hydrologic Hazard Analyses.