Background/Objectives

As part of its Vulnerability Assessment and Resilience Plan (VARP), the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (SRS) was required to first perform an analysis of the site’s climate vulnerability by quantifying the current and future risks. 

Approach/Activities

This involved collecting historical weather data at our site and deciding on a set of specific ‘hazards’ – heat waves, cold spells, droughts and floods.  These were precisely defined (e.g., a heat wave comprised a sequence of days with a high temperature above the 95^th percentile), and the frequencies of the different hazards were calculated.  The next step involved calculating the future threat, which required statistically downscaling projections from an ensemble of global climate model simulations.  This was used to calculate the future likelihood of the various hazards, and the change in likelihood between the present and future became the basis for determining which site ‘assets’ were most vulnerable to climate change.

Results/Lessons Learned

I will discuss the various hazards we analyzed for SRS, how past and future compare, how the danger to site assets was quantified, and how we are translating this into concrete action to minimize the site’s vulnerability to climate change.