The Role of Climate on Hydrologic Extremes in the Northern Great Plains Region: Updates from the National Climate Assessment

The National Climate Assessment summarizes the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future. This presentation will begin with an overview of the 4th National Climate Assessment (NCA4). Next, water-related science from Dr. Livneh’s team will be presented focused on understanding the relationship between climate and extreme regional hydrologic events.
The research portion of this presentation will focus first on the recent 2012 drought event, which was accompanied by record deficits in precipitation and high temperatures during the May-August growing season. The primary objective is to understand the proximal causes of this drought event—whether driven by temperature versus precipitation—as well as important regional features of drought events more generally.

Ben Livneh, assistant professor, Civil Environmental and Architectural Engineering Fellow, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, grew up in Ontario Canada. He earned his first two civil engineering degrees at the University of Western Ontario. He earned his Ph.D. degree at the University of Washington under the guidance of Dennis P. Lettenmaier, where he worked on a wide range of problems related to large-scale computational hydrology.