Western Water Assessment

Adapting to climate change requires that decision makers have information that is relevant to solve their problems at hand. Unfortunately, potential users of climate information often do not know where to look for relevant information, nor are producers of climate information well connected to potential users, resulting in a gap that separates the supply and demand of climate information. This project first created a comprehensive database of climate service providers in the western US. Now researchers are conducting a survey of climate service providers to better understand what services are in demand, how providers are developing and maintaining their stakeholder networks, and how they evaluate climate services development and stakeholder engagement. The Western Region Climate Service Providers Database: http://wrcc.dri.edu/ClimSvcProviders/

Adapting to climate change requires that decision makers have information that is salient, credible, and legitimate. The research efforts in this project represent a first attempt to reduce the gap between the supply of and demand for climate information by creating a comprehensive database of climate service providers in the western United States.

Importance: This project was initiated at the request of the NOAA Western Region Climate Services director, who was looking for guidance about ongoing climate service activities in the region. The project evolved into a searchable public database that allows those seeking climate services to easily access information about regional providers.

Climate Service Provider Database: https://wrcc.dri.edu/ClimSvcProviders/

The National Climate Assessment was released on May 6, 2014. The Southwest chapter (Chapter 20) documents critical climate change impacts to the region’s coasts and forests, and projects increased risks to water resources reliability, agriculture, and public health. The chapter notes the special vulnerabilities of native nations and U.S.-Mexico border cities, due to high rates of poverty, and low tax bases for generating resources needed to develop and improve infrastructure, such as safe roads and water treatment and distribution. The chapter also points to adaptive responses by state and local governments, water utilities, forest managers, and federal agencies, to reduce the impacts of current and future changes. The chapter gives an example of how the region can reduce its production of heat-trapping greenhouse gases through adjustment of energy sources used in the generation of electricity, while also reducing water use. See http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/regions/southwest.

The Southwest Chapter for the National Climate Assessment was based on The Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States, a technical input report published in May 2013. The technical input report is a summary and synthesis of the past, present, and projected future of the region’s climate, examining what this means for the health and well-being of human populations and the environment throughout the six Southwestern states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah—an area that includes vast stretches of coastline, an international border, and the jurisdictions of more than one hundred Native nations. This year, results from this report were distributed through presentations, publications, and media coverage throughout the Southwest.

Most organized discussion about climate change within the Colorado River Basin (CRB) has addressed projected climate impacts and specific rules for operating under surplus and shortage. This project moved the discussion from awareness to action and coordination by assessing regional adaptation capabilities and cataloging existing adaptation efforts in the broader CRB. In collaboration with the WWA and CNAP, researchers convened a workshop of key stakeholders and agencies from across a spectrum of sectors in the CRB to (a) foster communication of the extent of existing and planned climate adaptation initiatives, (b) catalogue projects, documents, and alliances whose work, expertise, and connections can be leveraged to develop sustained and ongoing assessment, (c) evaluate the scientific capacity within the region to address climate adaptation issues and to leverage existing federal labs, data centers, and new climate services initiatives (NOAA, DOI), and (d) assess science, decision-making, and communication needs in the region.

The workshop focused on water as the major medium through which climate change impacts will manifest in the CRB, and looked broadly at issues of both water and land management, as well as recreation, tourism, environmental flows, and urban adaptation. Follow-up from the workshop included a webinar series, designed to maintain communication, invite new participants, and to give an opportunity for ongoing and new initiatives to “show and tell” and for participants to network.

This project was part of the US National Climate Assessment coordinated by the US Global Climate Research Program.

Persistent drought and climate change affect water and energy costs, and hence choices made by farms, cities and industrial water and energy users, as well as energy and water providers’ operations. This project examines potential climate change and variability adaptation strategies related to water and energy in the Colorado River and Rio Grande Basins, including northwestern Mexico. Researchers are investigating how climate influences the market price of water and developing a menu of water and energy supply reliability tools with guidelines for using these tools.

Several recent studies estimate that the future streamflow of the Colorado River will decline due to drought and climate change. However, estimates from these projections range from less than 10% to a 45% decline by 2050. This cross-RISA research team explored why this large range exists and suggested ways that scientists and other stakeholders could apply these projections for future research and adaptation efforts.

Although the projections show drastically different amounts of streamflow reduction, it is still evident across all studies that Colorado River streamflow will be reduced due to climate change. Additionally, current reconstructions of the worst possible drought for the Colorado River are underestimates of the severity and duration of drought that has occurred, and that could occur, in the Colorado River Basin.

The Southwest is one of the most sensitive regions of the U.S. to climate change and variability. It is essential to understand the full scope of climate variability and change in the Southwest and how to communicate in ways that enable effective decision mak­ing. The goals of this project are to (1) lead efforts to communicate about climate variability and change to decision and policy makers in, and relevant to, the Southwest, and (2) make climate knowledge useful for stakeholder understanding and decision making.

This project evaluated the uses of water supply forecasts in the Upper Colorado River Basin by developing a series of rigorous user-needs assessments. Project goals included: (1) improving the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center’s water supply forecasts for various user groups; (2) expanding the user-base and enhancing their understanding of forecasts; and (3) understanding the role of uncertainty and risk in interpreting and applying the forecast. This research used a variety of social science methods to help product developers identify, engage, and build relationships with diverse users, with the end goal of constructing more useful climate products. These methods included educational workshops, focus groups, structured interviews, surveys, and decision games.

Many municipalities and water providers have become motivated to investigate the effects of climate variability and climate change on water resources. The primary objective of this project was to evaluate engagements of climate science and water management in three western cities—Denver, CO; Seattle, WA; and Tucson, AZ—and thereby contribute to a critical body of knowledge that will be a guide for other collaborative efforts and, more broadly, provide a possible template for other scientific outreach and coordination ef­forts, such as an effective national climate service.

This project connects two RISA programs, the Western Water Assessment (WWA) and CLIMAS with regional conservation planners and decision makers to improve climate adaptation planning and implementation by land managers in the American Southwest. A key challenge is to bring climate knowledge to bear on habitat and species conservation efforts underway in the region, and to move conservation projects beyond vulnerability assessments to adaptation planning and implementation. This project is intended to advance four goals: expand translational science capacity in the region to support adaptation; improve regional climate-sensitive conservation decision making; disseminate climate knowledge through conservation networks in the region; and develop both a comprehensive evaluation of the project and a training curriculum for future personnel intending to engage in this type of work. The project will prototype and develop a model for expanding the translational climate science capacity needed to move ecosystem management beyond vulnerability assessments and into on-the-ground decision making for adaptation to climate variability and change.