Fraser, CJD, Martin, AJ & Pedersen, TF 2011, 'Climate-scaled water balance development for mine closure planning', in AB Fourie, M Tibbett & A Beersing (eds), Mine Closure 2011: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Mine Closure, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, pp. 357-366, https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_rep/1152_104_Fraser
(https://papers.acg.uwa.edu.au/p/1152_104_Fraser/)
Abstract: Long-term (i.e. 100 year) climate predictions for high-latitude stations indicate these places may experience significant annual and seasonal changes in air temperature, precipitation and type and amount of evaporation. Such changes would have a pronounced effect on the water balances of many mine sites and strategies to manage water, effluents and environmental impacts post-closure. This paper describes methods for the development of climate-scaled water balances for mine closure planning. The methods focus on: 1) the compilation of site-specific and regional climate data; 2) usage of a weather generator to produce long-term synthetic datasets representative of the location of interest; 3) assessment of climate change scenario data (e.g. general circulation model (GCM) and regional climate model (RCM)) and the selection of data scalars for model parameters of interest; and 4) the steps to combine elements of climate variability (weather generated) and climate change to produce a climate-scaled daily dataset representative of the location. Data are presented for a case study in northern Europe. The paper concludes with a discussion of the uncertainties inherent in the approach and opportunities and limitations in applying it to other locations.