Climate Change Impacts to Stormwater

Description

Climate change impacts stormwater.  Heating of the atmosphere increases storm energy and evaporation.  Increased storm energy has the potential to produce larger and more intense precipitation events which can produce more stomwater runoff and larger floods.  Engineers design facilities and make predictions based on the observation and modeling of past hydrologic events.  This is based on the unspoken assumption that future events will be similar to past events when measured in terms of frequency, duration, and magnitude.  Is this a good assumption? This course discusses how climate change impacts stormwater runoff, how to account for these changes in the design of stormwater and flood control facilities, and how secondary effects such as sea level rise indirectly impact stormwater runoff.