PNNL

Abstract

Humans use water for many important tasks, such as drinking, growing food, and cooling power plants. Since future water demands depend on complex global interactions between economic sectors (e.g., demand for wheat in one country causing demand for water to grow that wheat in another country), it is often modeled at coarse spatial and temporal scales as part of models that account for complex, multi-sector systems dynamics. However, models that project future water availability typically simulate physical processes at much finer scales. Tethys enables coupling between these kinds of models by downscaling region-scale water demand projections using sector-specific proxies and formulas.