Agenda Now Posted for Special June 9 Workshop in Southern California on Precipitation Forecasting & Drought Management
One-Day Event in Irvine will Help Water Managers 'Get Ahead of the Storms' to Better Manage Drought
California’s vast network of surface
water reservoirs is designed to hold carryover storage from year
to year to ensure water is available for urban, agricultural and
environmental purposes during dry months and years.
But climate change has begun to affect our reliance on historical weather patterns to predict California’s water supply, making it even more difficult for water managers to manage drought conditions and placing a greater emphasis on better precipitation forecasting at longer lead times.
Learn about efforts being made to ‘get ahead of the storms’ through new science, models and technology at our special one-day workshop June 9 in Irvine, Making Progress on Drought Management: Improvements in Seasonal Precipitation Forecasting. The event is sponsored by the California Department of Water Resources in partnership with the Water Education Foundation.
The event will bring together research meteorologists, climate scientists and others to discuss improvements in the science of long-range forecasting at varying time scales – critical for managing water supplies – and what may be in store for us this winter.
A full draft agenda can be found here, but some featured speakers include:
- Jeanine Jones, DWR’s interstate resources manager discussing improved drought preparedness through better precipitation forecasting;
- Mike Anderson, DWR’s state climatologist discussing climate change implications for long-range forecasting;
- Alex Tardy, National Weather Service warning coordination meteorologist discussing short- and long-term forecasting;
- Mike DeFlorio, Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes researcher discussing the skill of experimental season to sub-season forecasts;
- Xianan Jiang, UCLA researcher discussing challenges in predicting California’s winter precipitation.
This special June 9 workshop will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the Beckman Center in Irvine. The $79 registration includes refreshments, lunch and materials.
