Description
As King County agencies look to systematically integrate climate change into decision making, the need for in-house technical expertise on climate to guide those decisions is growing, particularly in the context of hydrologic impacts. King County will form a new Science Section Climate Change Unit to assess and predict hydrologic impacts of climate change and inform County agency work on implementing and evaluating effective action on climate change. The unit, consisting primarily of existing staff, will provide in-house technical expertise related to climate science, scenario development, watershed modeling, and hydrologic monitoring and evaluation. Planned technical services initially include measuring and modeling the impacts of climate change on King County water resources and stormwater runoff, watershed modeling to inform and evaluate preparedness actions, technical assessments, data analysis in support of integrating climate change into capital planning, and finding optimal ways manage and protect water resources at watershed scales. Opportunities to provide additional types of technical support will also be evaluated and developed over time as appropriate.