EOMF-23. Projecting Long-Term Reservoir Evaporation on Catalina Island, California Using an Open Water Evaporation Model and Downscaled Global Climate Model Projections

Abstract
Catalina Island (CI) is a popular tourist destination off the coast of Southern California that draws over 1 million visitors per year but has limited freshwater resources. Solar panels were installed over a portion of the main reservoir on CI used for groundwater recharge to reduce evaporative losses and provide renewable energy. However, officials want to know if more panels should be built to mitigate potential future increases in reservoir evaporation due to climate change. We bias-corrected and then applied downscaled global climate model projections to an open-water reservoir evaporation model to estimate mid- and end- of century evaporation rates. Projected evaporation rates can be used to determine how much more of the reservoir needs to be covered with solar panels to keep evaporation rates at current levels. We also compared two bias correction approaches and benchmarked our estimates of reservoir evaporation against a global dataset.