NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC)

Extreme heat is already a key public health risk in the adjacent cities of El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Las Cruces, New Mexico. Projected temperature changes, combined with the urban heat island effect and regional poverty, expose urban areas with high vulnerabilities to heat-health risks.

The proposed initiative aims to increase preparedness and capacity to adapt to extreme high temperatures and heat waves in Rio Grande-Bravo Basin border cities by: a) identifying key heat health parameters and target populations for heat health early warning; b) assessing and developing capacity for coordinated heat health early warning; c) facilitating the sharing of best practices; and d) initiating development toward a community of practice within a network of regional cities.

Importance: This project explicitly connects CLIMAS with the NOAA-CDC National Integrated Heat Health Information System initiative and with an international network of similar projects aimed at implementing the Global Framework for Climate Services.

Additonal Information:

Project website

July 2016 Workshop Report Executive Summary: English Español

Barriers to the use of climate information can be met with innovative tools that offer users the ability to perform custom­ized analyses. This project works to develop such tools, with a commitment to ongoing user engagement and adaptation of the tools. In addition, tools that have proved successful in regional applications may be usefully extended to new regions. Rather than simply transfer the software, we develop partner capacities to implement collaborative software development protocols and processes. Tools developed, maintained, or extended under this project include the Climate Information Delivery and Decision Support System (CLIDDSS), the Forecast Evaluation Tool (FET), the Dynamic Drought Index Tool (DDIT) developed by Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments (CISA), AgroClimate developed by the Southeast Climate Consortium (SECC), and the PaleoToolKit developed in conjunction with the Western Water Assessment (WWA) and CLIMAS-affiliated researchers. For more on each of these products, visit the Tools page.

Early in the CLIMAS project, dialogue with stakeholders clearly identified significant barriers precluding more extensive and effective use of hydroclimatic forecasts, including lack of relevant and quantifiable forecast skill, misinterpretation of forecast products, and inability to place forecasts in historical context. Qualitative aspects of forecasts can be as important as any quantitative attribute in affecting how users interpret, apply, and ultimately judge probabilistic forecasts. Significant work is needed to develop forecast products that can be interpreted easily, correctly, and reliably without the need for special training. This project applied techniques for assessing forecast performance, qualitatively and quantitatively, with the intention of helping stakeholders appropriately align forecast use with measures of forecast skill. Researchers also examined the impacts of misinterpretation of forecast products.