The Threat of Climate Change to Urban Stormwater Infrastructure

We will present a recent comparison of rainfall from TP-40, Atlas-14, and predictions from GCMs (near future, mid-century, end of century). We applied these rainfalls to three developed urban watersheds in Minnesota (Duluth, Minneapolis, Rochester), and will draw conclusions from the resulting flood depth and hydrograph predictions. We will then describe an analysis of what level of storage and infiltration implementation would be required to mitigate predicted floods and demonstrate a case for re-evaluating a couple of conventional assumptions and management strategies.