NOAA Regional Climate Services Directors

Extreme heat is a key public health risk in the adjacent cities of El Paso, TX, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Las Cruces, NM. Projected temperature changes, combined with the urban heat island effect and regional poverty, expose urban areas with high vulnerabilities to heat-health risks. This project increases preparedness and capacity to adapt to extreme high temperatures and heat waves in Rio Grande/Bravo basin border cities through several approaches: identifying key heat-health parameters and target populations for heat-health early warning; determining a calendar of climate- and weather-related public health decisions; assessing capacity for coordinated heat-health early warning; and facilitating discussions toward developing a community of practice and mutual learning within a network of regional cities. The project advances frameworks for a National Integrated Heat Health Information System and initiatives within the Global Framework for Climate Services. For more information, click here.

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/

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

Adaptation in water management is a greatly revered yet poorly understood goal and concept. The U.S. suffers from what's been called an “adaptation deficit”, but there is little comprehensive research on how to advance adaptation. Previous research has found that case studies of how adaptation is actually being delivered, and barriers to effective delivery (e.g., information, capacity, institutions), is a critical missing component of existing adaptation research. This project addresses this gap both theoretically and methodologically in four study sites in the Arizona-Sonora region of the U.S-Mexico border: Tucson, AZ; Yuma, AZ and the Colorado River delta; the Upper Gulf of California (from Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, north); and Hermosillo, Sonora. The key research questions guiding this project include: what is the role of networks in governance and the implications for using climate knowledge; what are the most effective climate services to support efforts to adapt; and how can decision-support tools build institutional adaptive capacity. Researchers examine these questions via interactive semi-structured interviews, a webinar series on the border climate, and a scientist-stakeholder symposium. Project outputs will include pilot development of an institutional adaptive capacity index; presentation of results at professional meetings, papers in peer-reviewed journals, workshop and symposia reports, the Webinar series, quarterly production of the Transborder Climate newsletter, and a project website.

Climate and its impacts extend across the U.S.-Mexico border, affecting many economic activities, including the management of natural resources, agriculture and ranching, and public health. This project aims to (a) provide information on climate and the environment for the binational border region, and (b) assess the effectiveness of social media for building the capacity to convey and us climate information in decision making.

Previously, this project was called Transborder Climate: Adaptation Without Boundaries. Transborder Climate was a newsletter with reports on research and forecasts related to climate and its impacts in the transboundary United States-Mexico border region. Transborder Climate provided information for resource management and policy, with a special emphasis on information relevant to adaptation to climate variations and trends. It was produced in English and Spanish.

Currently, the project is focused on the borderlands within the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo transboundary river basin encompassing the New Mexico, Texas, and Chihuahua borders. The first Rio Grande/Bravo Climate Impacts & Outlook was produced during winter 2013-14. This was the first of multiple experimental quarterly binational/bilingual climate outlooks designed to provide climate information to stakeholders in this region. The product is produced on behalf of the North American Climate Services Partnership, a collaboration between the weather services of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. This is also part of a NIDIS pilot project for the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo transboundary region.
http://drought.gov/media/pgfiles/Rio-Grande-Bravo-Climate-Outlook13.pdf
http://drought.gov/media/pgfiles/Rio-Grande-Bravo-Climate-Outlook-spani…