An integrated climate and water resources management (iC-WRM) prototype for long term water allocation in the Upper Yellow River Region of China

Water resources management is often regarded as a complex issue which requires the process of planning, developing, allocating, distributing and managing the use of water resources. Climate change poses challenges (and risks) to the water sector, especially when the nation state is vast and has uneven distribution of water sources such as China. Furthermore, water management still largely relies on the use of historic, seasonal and annual climate data. There is limited demand from water managers for longer term climate information such as multi-annual and multi-decadal data. To promote the use of longer term climate information in the water sector in China, in this research, we have adopted an interdisciplinary approach and have applied a user-centred, co-production method to develop an integrated climate and water resources climate service prototype (iC-WRM) with water managers and their intermediaries. The Upper Yellow River Basin was used as a demonstration in iC-WRM to provide water managers with different scenario-based simulations to gain insights to the impacts of climate change on the region. Noticeably, the development of the prototype was constructed, tested and evaluated by water managers under Coronavirus restrictions which had prevented the typical co-development and user-evaluation processes to be undertaken. iC-WRM was shown to be successful, as key messages relating to be the impact of climate change could be effectively communicated through the prototype interface. Also, it has promoted a degree of understanding about the potential impact of climate change in terms of water resources management in China. This will encourage the development of other climate services to understand and implement the key outputs of this climate service prototype to other sectors (e.g. agriculture/food production, regional planning).