Assessment of Projected Extreme Climate Change Impact on The Operational Performance of Surface Water Reservoirs

This study investigated the impacts of the extreme climate change projections on the performance of Lake Hume in southeast Australia. The study utilised the Australian Climate Change Website tools and leveraged publications from reliable sources to project future inflows and demand. The study revealed that the Lake Hume reservoir could withstand extreme wet conditions with an insignificant impact on the downstream environment. Additionally, for these inflow conditions, the simulation results showed that the storage capacity was adequate for meeting the demand with enhanced performance. However, the release exceeded the downstream channel capacity on one occasion, but the impact was insignificant. On the other hand, the modelling of the extreme-dry conditions showed that the reservoir might drain all its stored water almost 53% of the time, with knock-on effects on systems reliability, resilience and vulnerability. Both of these results are expected, but isolating the effects of extreme wet and dry, as done in this study, will assist water managers to better prepare for coping with water security issues. That may arise from extreme weather events, which are now projected to occur more frequently with climate change.