Interactions between temperature, water deliveries, and land use in Coastal Southern California
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: As temperatures rise with climate change, water demand will likely shift in response to both environmental stress and human adaptation. Understanding how managed water systems respond to temperature variability is a critical but underdeveloped aspect of climate adaptation, particularly in arid urban regions already facing water scarcity. San Diego County, a semi-arid coastal region with over 3 million residents reliant on imported water, provides a representative case. We analyze daily water delivery data (2007–2021) from 20 San Diego County water agencies alongside temperature records to evaluate how summer temperatures influence water deliveries. We define and quantify the temperature sensitivity of water deliveries as the change in deliveries associated with changes in temperature, and examine how these sensitivities vary with antecedent precipitation and geographic and demographic characteristics, including land use, population density, income, and coastal proximity. We find that agencies serving areas with more irrigated land uses – such as parks, golf courses, and agriculture – exhibit greater increases in water deliveries with higher temperatures. Responses to temperature anomalies are more strongly influenced by prior precipitation and less closely linked to land use. Finally, we combine sensitivity estimates with climate model–projected summer temperatures to estimate future water delivery increases, showing that these increases are jointly determined by agency-level temperature sensitivity and the magnitude of projected warming. These findings highlight the variable sensitivity of water systems to climate and land use, underscoring the importance of understanding local climate–water dynamics for water resources planning in semi-arid urban regions.
Authors: Laney Wicker, Efren Lopez, Seevani Bista, Daniel R. Cayan, Morgan C Levy
Language: English
Subfield: Ocean Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4414593848
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