Climate-scaled water balance development for mine closure planning

Authors: Fraser, CJD; Martin, AJ; Pedersen, TF

DOI https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_rep/1152_104_Fraser

Cite As:
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

Download citation as:   ris   bibtex   endnote   text   Zotero


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.

References:
ACIA (2004) Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 144 p.
Crusius, J., Dunbar, D. and McNee, J.J. (2002) Predictions of pit lake water column properties using a coupled mixing and geochemical speciation model. Transactions for the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, 26–28 February 2001, Denver, Colorado, USA. Vol. 312, pp. 49–56.
Dunbar, D., Pieters, R. and McNee, J.J. (2004) Modeling a Negatively Buoyant Plume and Related Surface Dissolved Metal Removal in the Equity MainZone Pit LakePit Lakes 2004. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Reno, Nevada, 16–18 November, 2004.
IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning (eds), 996 p.
IPCC (2008) Regional scatterplot download interface, viewed 1 April 2011. plots/scatterplots_region.html.
Nelson, R. (2002) ClimGen – Climatic Data Generator User’s Manual. Biological Systems Engineering Department, Washington State University, 28 p.
SMHI (2009) Erik Kjellström, Ulf Hansson, Colin Jones, Grigory, Nikulin, Gustav Strandberg and Anders Ullerstig: Changes in the wintertime temperature climate as deduced from an ensemble of regional climate change simulations for Europe. Rossby Centre Newsletter, May 2009, pp. 9–15.
Wilby, R.L., Charles, S.P., Zorita R., Timbal, B. Whetton, P. and Mearns, L.O. (2004) Guidelines for use of climate scenarios developed from statistical downscaling methods, Tech. rep., Data Distribution Centre of the IPCC. guidelines/index.html, 27 p.
Wilks, D.S. and Wilby, R.L. (1999) The weather generation game: a review of stochastic weather models. Progress in Physical Geography, 23 (3), pp. 329–357.




© Copyright 2024, Australian Centre for Geomechanics (ACG), The University of Western Australia. All rights reserved.
View copyright/legal information
Please direct any queries or error reports to repository-acg@uwa.edu.au