Climate Variability and Change in the Southwest

Part V: Wrap-up Session

Chapter 19

Recommendations

Wrap-up Session Participants: Diana Liverman (facilitator), Roger Bales, Bill Erickson, Robert Gerard, Robert Hackenberg, Holly Hartman, Hoyt Johnson III, David Kirtland, Mitchel McClaran, Linda Mearns, Robert Merideth, Ann Phillips, Kelly Redmond, Richard Reinhardt, Carlos Rincon, Dennis Sundie, Robert Thompson, Robert Varady, Teri Ward, James Washburne, Marvin Waterstone

Recommendations from 18 attendees were submitted to the conference's organizing committee on the final day of discussion. While most attendees contributed more than one recommendation, there was significant overlap among the various submissions.

After reviewing the submissions, the final recommendations are presented here in seven broad categories. These categories are not mutually exclusive, as there are some crosscutting themes found in several categories. The following is a summary of the seven categories listed in order of perceived (by the attendees) importance.

Recommendations: Information/Data

1. Create a clearinghouse for data

• Archive historical and current climate data.
• Provide public access to these data.
• Identify users and their information and data needs.

2. Assess decisionmaking processes

3. Identify what data are required for making decisions and who the users are.

4. Provide policymakers with information on who is affected by climate changes, what geographic areas are affected, how these people and areas are affected, and potential mitigation strategies.

• Identify how stakeholders use information in making decisions.
• Researchers/scientists should frame the issues of climate change in a form understandable to stakeholders.
• Stakeholders need to assume a more active role in guiding research directions and providing feedback to researchers and scientists.
• Use in situ data with remotely-sensed imagery as a data source.
• Incorporate data with GIS to produce maps showing spatial extent of climate change.

Recommendations: Climate Forecasting and Hydrological Modeling

5. Provide better climate forecasting.

• Improve seasonal to intra-annual forecasts of precipitation frequency and intensity.
• Downscale long-term forecasts to usable formats.
• Predict the regional and local impacts of El NiÔ o.
• Use data from the Coop Observation Network to predict climate.
• Develop model for reproducing large scale atmospheric features of the summer monsoon.

6. Provide better hydrological modeling.

• Improve hydrologic models to predict/estimate overall water budget.
• Use water budget as foundation for defining climate variables.

Recommendations: Market Responses to Climate Change

7. Develop improved understanding of pricing of resources.

• Will water and energy stresses in the Southwest lead to full-cost pricing?
• Will externalities (e.g. pollution) be incorporated into allocation mechanisms?
• What are the costs for mitigating pollution, and who will pay them?
• What is the net present value of a future gallon of fresh water?

8. Develop improved understanding of consumer behavior

• Can consumer behavior (fossil-fuel consumption) be modified via the market?

Recommendations: Indigenous Knowledge & Southwest Perspective

9. Learn from indigenous knowledge.

• There is a need to incorporate indigenous knowledge about climate in the Southwest into existing databases.
• Indian tribes need to be considered as stakeholders, as they have much "non-scientific" knowledge to contribute in the forms of songs, verse, and drawing.

10. Learn from the southwestern experience.

• If the rest of the U.S. becomes drier and hotter, those areas can learn from adaptations in the Southwest.
• Highlight the Southwest's unique position of being able to adapt to climate extremes.

Recommendations: Health Issues

11. Develop better understanding of how climate change might affect public health.

• What are the effects of climate change on air quality, water quality, and sanitation?
• Is a lower socioeconomic status related to an increased vulnerability of health problems?
• How will climate change affect the incidence of vector-borne diseases from water, mosquitoes, and rodents?

Recommendations: Sensitivity Analyses by Sector

12. Utilize sensitivity analyses to better understand vulnerability and responses.

• What are regional/local variations in vulnerability?
• How are uncertainty and vulnerability measured?
• What is the robustness and resiliency for each of various sectors?

Recommendations: Ecosystem Monitoring

14. Use ecosystems as natural benchmarks to measure change and resiliency to climate change.

15. Develop appropriate management strategies.

• Land-management agencies must develop common standard or protocol for managing ecosystems.
• Long-term management approaches are required.
• Ecosystem health can be used as a baseline to examine impacts of climate change.