California faces the prospect of significant water management challenges from climate change. The most certain changes are accelerated sea level rise and increased temperatures, which will reduce the Sierra Nevada snowpack and shift more runoff to winter months. These changes will likely cause major problems for flood control, for water supply reservoir operations, and for the maintenance of the present system of water exports through the fragile levee system of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Fortunately, California also possesses numerous assets including adaptation tools and institutional capabilities which limit vulnerability of the state’s residents to changing conditions. Water supply managers have already begun using underground storage, water transfers, conservation, recycling, and desalination to expand their capacity to meet changing demands, and these same tools present cost-effective options for responding to a wide range of climate change scenarios. Many staples of flood management including reservoir operations, levees, bypasses, insurance, and land-use regulation are appropriate for the challenges posed by increasing flood flows.
