Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Sensitivity Of Urban Water Consumption To Weather And Climate Variability At Multiple Temporal Scales: The Case Of Portland, Oregon, Heejun Chang, Sarah Praskievicz, Hossein Parandvash

International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research

The sensitivity of municipal water consumption to climate and weather variability is investigated for Portland’s water provider service area between 1960 and 2013. The relationship between detrended seasonal urban water use (the difference between total water use and base use) and weather and climate variables (precipitation, maximum temperature) is examined at daily, monthly, and seasonal scales using stepwise multiple regression and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models. At a seasonal and a monthly timescales, interannual variation in maximum temperature is the most important predictor of seasonal water consumption per capita, explaining up to 48% of the variation in seasonal monthly …