Hydro Dams Are Struggling To Handle the World's Intensifying Weather 59
Saqib Rahim reports via Wired: It's been one of the wettest years in California since records began. From October 2022 to March 2023, the state was blasted by 31 atmospheric rivers -- colossal bands of water vapor that form above the Pacific and become firehoses when they reach the West Coast. What surprised climate scientists wasn't the number of storms, but their strength and rat-a-tat frequency. The downpours shocked a water system that had just experienced the driest three years in recorded state history, causing floods, mass evacuations, and at least 22 deaths.
Swinging between wet and dry extremes is typical for California, but last winter's rain, potentially intensified by climate change, was almost unmanageable. Add to that the arrival of El Nino, and more extreme weather looks likely for the state. This is going to make life very difficult for the dam operators tasked with capturing and controlling much of the state's water. Like most of the world's 58,700 large dams, those in California were built for yesterday's more stable climate patterns. But as climate change taxes the world's water systems -- affecting rainfall, snowmelt, and evaporation -- it's getting tough to predict how much water gets to a dam, and when. Dams are increasingly either water-starved, unable to maintain supplies of power and water for their communities, or overwhelmed and forced to release more water than desired -- risking flooding downstream.
But at one major dam in Northern California, operators have been demonstrating how to not just weather these erratic and intense storms, but capitalize on them. Management crews at New Bullards Bar, built in 1970, entered last winter armed with new forecasting tools that gave unprecedented insight into the size and strength of the coming storms -- allowing them to strategize how to handle the rain. First, they let the rains refill their reservoir, a typical move after a long drought. Then, as more storms formed at sea, they made the tough choice to release some of this precious hoard through their hydropower turbines, confident that more rain was coming. "I felt a little nervous at first," says John James, director of resource planning at Yuba Water Agency in northern California. Fresh showers soon validated the move. New Bullards Bar ended winter with plumped water supplies, a 150 percent boost in power generation, and a clean safety record. The strategy offers a glimpse of how better forecasting can allow hydropower to adapt to the climate age.
Swinging between wet and dry extremes is typical for California, but last winter's rain, potentially intensified by climate change, was almost unmanageable. Add to that the arrival of El Nino, and more extreme weather looks likely for the state. This is going to make life very difficult for the dam operators tasked with capturing and controlling much of the state's water. Like most of the world's 58,700 large dams, those in California were built for yesterday's more stable climate patterns. But as climate change taxes the world's water systems -- affecting rainfall, snowmelt, and evaporation -- it's getting tough to predict how much water gets to a dam, and when. Dams are increasingly either water-starved, unable to maintain supplies of power and water for their communities, or overwhelmed and forced to release more water than desired -- risking flooding downstream.
But at one major dam in Northern California, operators have been demonstrating how to not just weather these erratic and intense storms, but capitalize on them. Management crews at New Bullards Bar, built in 1970, entered last winter armed with new forecasting tools that gave unprecedented insight into the size and strength of the coming storms -- allowing them to strategize how to handle the rain. First, they let the rains refill their reservoir, a typical move after a long drought. Then, as more storms formed at sea, they made the tough choice to release some of this precious hoard through their hydropower turbines, confident that more rain was coming. "I felt a little nervous at first," says John James, director of resource planning at Yuba Water Agency in northern California. Fresh showers soon validated the move. New Bullards Bar ended winter with plumped water supplies, a 150 percent boost in power generation, and a clean safety record. The strategy offers a glimpse of how better forecasting can allow hydropower to adapt to the climate age.
High Performance Computing (Score:1, Offtopic)
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Unfortunately chaos theory puts a limit on how good a weather (not climate) prediction can be no matter how powerful the computer. And thats only for the known variables. Add on top of that unknown ones from meteorites entering the atmosphere to literal butterflies flapping their wings to human activities such as aircraft contrails and after a time weather forecasting simply becomes guesswork.
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and so what? Weather prediction isn't the end all be all of dam management anyway. If water levels are low, the goal is to preserve and raise them, if they are high it's the opposite. To make the system work, the dam must have enough capacity to handle variation. Weather prediction factors virtually nothing into any of that.
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Umm, TFS is all about how is CAN factor substantially into it, by reducing the amount of variation the dam itself needs to be able to physically handle, which means a much cheaper dam.
if they are high it's the opposite.
It's really not though - the goal is *always* to keep your dam as full as you safely can. The ideal outcome is to exit the rainy season with your dam full to the brim, without ever having overflowed.
You don't normally want to dump water from your dam during the rainy season unless absolutely necessary - you never know when the
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It's really not though - the goal is *always* to keep your dam as full as you safely can.
That depends on what the dam was designed for. Flood control dams should keep their reservoirs empty as much as practical. Until a major rainfall even occurs. Then the water is held back and allowed to flow downstream slowly. To prevent floods downstream. Until it's empty again and ready for the next big storm.
F*ck all the recreational boaters who scream when their favorite man-made lake dries up. We didn't make that lake for you.
Re: High Performance Computing (Score:2)
In many cases, the promise of recreational boating is now the votes for the dam were garnered. Yes, it is for the boats. Add to that the economic impact of tourism and they become a constituency that cannot be ignored.
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Weather forecasts are pretty accurate 4 to 7 days into the future.
There you go, trolling again. Maybe for Southern California, where it's sunny and 72 every day. Not for Chicago. Just this past winter we were told twice that we'd get 6-12 inches of snow as late than a few hours before the events. One of them was a coating, the other one it didn't snow at all. Nobody said anything about a butterfly thousands of miles away, but weather forecasts are far from a done deal.
Re: High Performance Computing (Score:1)
You are in a situation where The population density, causes the weather to change locally, neighborhood to neighborhood. Freeways are a great example. The weather can be different on one side of a freeway, than the other..
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Must be a problem of the weather forecasters in Chicago then.
I'm sailing.
Even the wind speed forecast is more than 4 days into the future pretty accurate.
www.windy.com
https://www.windfinder.com/ [windfinder.com]
Obviously there are corner cases like yours, where something drastically changed what was forecasted before.
But, look in the mirror: the troll is you. Taking statements out of context.
Re: High Performance Computing (Score:2)
In places like Middle East, Western Europe, pacific coast, mid-west, eastern American, Australia, etc where weather has been fairly dependent on a minimum number of variables/input streams, then Yes. It becomes fairly easy to do 4-7 days. OTOH, parts of western Brazil, Himalayas, etc, and you are doing great with 3 days. One of the toughest is colorado from range ( eastern shadow of the Rockies), still does not have even 2 days decent. Why? Because 4-5 main streams interact between ft. Collins do
Municipalities must invest in water infra (Score:3)
The issue is that rainfall variance is increasing with climate change, a decrease in Arctic ice, and increasingly erratic N hemisphere jet stream: more droughts and more floods.
Libya is just one example of unpreparedness. I watched a report alleging officials there were advised by civil engineers of problems with both dams but they failed to act. (Libya has 2 warring governments and neither are particularly effective.)
Another dam problem in California [wikipedia.org] due to under-investment.
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You don't understand. California does everything first. Anything not invented in California wasn't invented.
And they're using AI and blockchain to manage the dams now!
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You don't understand. California does everything first. Anything not invented in California wasn't invented.
And they're using AI and blockchain to manage the dams now!
And California generally gets it wrong or goes W-A-A-Y OVERBOARD when doing it.
Just sayin' as someone that has to travel to that State of Disgust every other month or so on business.
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Lol, we both got modded down by some clown who thinks paying high taxes for bad roads and shit services makes a great state. He probably hasn't ever been to the state.
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JUST STOP (Score:5, Insightful)
... but last winter's rain, potentially intensified by climate change ...
Stop making crap up - blaming everything on "climate change" is doing more harm than good.
Current climate models, looking at how the west coast will be affected by global warming, do not predict this. Most scientists do not make this claim (many "science reporters" do, though). One recent paper postulated that winter rainfall amounts in California may vary more from year to year [nature.com] as a result of climate change - which is not the same thing. Plus, what's really been significant about California's recent rain is just how much they've had over the course of this entire year!
People have a recency bias. California had been in significant drought for multiple years. This year's rains have certainly been historically heavy - but the contrast to the previous long drought apparently causes some people to see even more than is actually there.
Side note: We've got a solid El Nino going now. It's likely California is going to have another very wet winter. I predict many people will somehow attempt to blame this on climate change.
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Well, if the climate models didn't predict it, then it cannot be climate change, yes? Have you ever investigated higher education?
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Are you saying the climate models are wrong?
I've read right here on slashdot many times the climate models have been thoroughly vetted in a very sciencey way and anyone who says they can be wrong is a troglodyte and a flame baiting troll.
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Yes, I was told that on slashdot many times. California is a HUGE area, it isn't a city or a small region.
Every time there's a regional event I am inundated with "GLOBAL WARMING!" and "CLIMATE CHANGE!"
You haven't noticed that?
I fully believe climate change is responsible for all unusual regional weather events. I learned that right here from the very smart, very sciencey slashdot geniuses. Are they wrong? Are the models wrong?
Would you like to have your cake or eat it?
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So you're just slinging bullshit about and hoping to get something right by accident, eventually. Good luck.
That is kind of how models work.
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Not at all. I am repeating what I was taught by the slashdot science geniuses: climate models are perfect under all circumstances and conditions.
You may not dispute the perfection that is climate modeling.
Amen!
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Modded down by some anti-science right wing fascist!
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California, as previously stated, does not have "local weather". The state is bigger than most countries and has multiple climate regions. Have you ever been there? Maybe seen it on a map? If you were a resident, like I was for most of my life, you'd know how stupid you sound talking about local weather in California.
You don't know shit about Africa and don't know shit about California, either.
You must be one of my regular NPC stalker trolls. Too afraid to use your regular handle because you'd be embar
Re: JUST STOP (Score:1, Troll)
And there is absolutely no way that an unanticipated consequence could occur in an incredibly complex system with literally millions of variables, which is known to literally everybody that knows anything about weather and climate to have vastly incomplete modeling?
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Except that the system isn't that complex, doesn't have "literally millions of variables" and variations in weather patterns cannot possible result in "unanticipated consequences" in a system explicitly designed to handle variations in weather patterns. In fact, all your post serves to do is display your ignorance.
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What did the climate models not predict? What are the climate scientist not saying?
I think that they are saying that we are likely to get considerably more extreme and variable weather, and that long term phenomena like El Nino might well intensify. We are certainly seeing this in many parts of the world; high volume summer rain fall has increased where I am resulting in much more significant surface water flood risk. Likewise, our local dams have had to change and adapt their strategies.
There are ways of e
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The claims "Potentially intensified by climate change" and " may vary more from year to year as a result of climate change" are two sides of the same coin. More variance year over year necessarily implies some years will be more intense than others. More variance year over year also means some years will be dryer than others... meaning, drought conditions. So it's also valid to say the droughts are also "potentially intensified by climate change."
Climate models might not predict how a specific year will tur
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Re: JUST STOP (Score:2)
But actually it was perfect unchanging weather for many many generations. That is exactly why California became such a desirable location to live.
Hey, that could be true (Score:3)
Cali only had like 6000 wildfires this year, destroying over 300,000 acres. And if you think that sounds like a lot, that's only a fifth of the 5-year annual average.
Huge water reservoirs (Score:2)
Is it so hard or expensive to dig underground and create some huge underground water reservoirs?
Or if space is not an issue, just build it above ground.
Through placement at strategic locations where rainwater tends to accumulate, these could be great buffers for wet and dry periods.
I know, the scale required is probably immense. But if we're able to build huge water damns, bridges that span oceans and orbital space stations, maybe we can also dig some really big holes underground?
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Think scale.
Re: Huge water reservoirs (Score:5, Informative)
How much do you want to spend?
For reference: Portland's "big pipe" project involved digging out a 22-foot diameter tunnel almost 6 miles long in order to reduce storm water overflow events into the Willamette River from 50+ times a year to less than 5. It is capable of pumping [wikipedia.org]
It took 5 years and 450 Megabucks in 2006 dollars to dig out that tunnel for sewer water where you give no fucks about contamination.
Digging big holes that you intend to stay big holes is really expensive.
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...and regulatory capture.
ho-hum (Score:2, Troll)
Weather comes and goes. Similar years occurred in the 70s, but climatists weren't born yet, so that doesn't count.
Re: ho-hum (Score:1)
Nothing like this summer has occurred in human history. Global temp broke records everywhere. Glaciers on every continent are in record retreat. The 1970s had nothing anywhere close to this temperature variation.
Dam operators have to use a dam as intended. (Score:2)
Pacific Northwest here (Score:2)
We want our rain back.
The jet stream and resulting storm tracks have been moving south over the past few years. Dumping all our rain in California, who can't handle it. And leaving us with another low water year as the cold, dry arctic air moves south.
Feels like maybe another ice age is starting.
CA politicians, Max Incompetence (Score:2)
The solution to this "problem" is simple and inexpensive, but would it would require rational policies (not gonna happen with this lot), reduce the power of politicians (not something they would want), and also be opposed by the tree-hugger lobby (some of whom oppose reservoirs) of the party in power (corruption, putting special interests over the public good for political gain), so it is never done.
The solution, as always when dealing with a naturally-fluctuating level of a critical resource, is increasing
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Politics does not enter into this unless they are directly telling dam operator