U.S. Geological Survey

Orchards and vineyards are particularly sensitive to temperature and are increasingly important to rural economies of the Southwest. However, growers of these high-value perennial fruit and nut crops have limited climate information to support critical decisions about selecting sites and cultivars. This project involves Cooperative Extension in AZ and NM and individual growers to survey a set of orchards and vineyards currently under production to gather information about their siting and cultivars. An assessment will be made of the required temperature conditions for current cultivars, whether these have historically been met, and if they are likely to be met in the coming decades. Crop insurance indemnity records will be used to perform a financial assessment of how site and cultivar selection are functioning in the current regional climate. The suitability of present-day cultivars will be evaluated in the context of anticipated increases in regional temperature.

To help inform the expanding winegrape-growing industry in Arizona, we are compiling and visualizing data of several relevant aspects of climate, soil, and topography specific to the proposed Sonoita, Willcox, and Verde Valley AVAs. This standard information about winegrape-growing regions does not exist for Arizona AVAs. https://cals.arizona.edu/research/climategem/content/arizona-avas.

The Climate Viticulture Newsletter provides a quick look at timely climate topics relevant to winegrape growing in Arizona and New Mexico. Monthly and mid-month special issues are sent via email and posted online. https://cals.arizona.edu/research/climategem/content/climate-viticultur….

University of Arizona Cooperative Extension and the National Weather Service (NWS) in Tucson have developed a working group focused on engaging the agricultural community of Southeast Arizona. The working group is assessing information needs, providing training opportunities and technical support, as well as conducting applied research and developing new and enhanced decision support tools. Main activities have included several training and needs assessment workshops, the development and maintenance of a listserv with more than 40 subscribers, and the development of new NWS forecast information visualizations and interfaces focused on frost and freezing events.

The purpose of this project is to investigate Colorado River basin droughts, and the climatic factors that influence those droughts. The project uses paleoclimatic data to extend instrumental climate and flow records, along with climate change projections to assess the range of possible conditions that may be expected to occur and to determine how warming temperatures may influence river flow and water supply in the future.

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…

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.

This project examines the impacts of drought and climate change on climate sensitive sectors in the Southwest, focusing on agriculture, outdoor recreation, and tourism. Drafted a funded grant proposal on Economic Impacts on Drought on Agriculture, Recreational Tourism, and Rural Communities to a combination of NIDIS and the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

This project explored innovative ways to address risk and resilience related to hydroclimatic extremes in both the upper and lower tails of streamflow probability distributions. The goal was to transfer the knowledge and record length that climate information and paleodata provide into useful tools for hydrologic decision making involving risk and resilience related to both floods and drought. Specific objectives included: (1) transfer of information from tree-ring reconstructions about past extreme streamflow episodes to water managers for integration into operations; (2) ongoing construction of a flood hydroclimatology database for linking climate, floods, and paleofloods; (3) interaction with stakeholders to develop innovative ways to use the flood database information; and (4) exploration of issues surrounding flood risk and human behavior to improve flood hazard management and flood warning practice.

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.

Water supplies in aquifer systems that are recharged by current precipitation are vulnerable to drought because recharge rates decrease during dry conditions. Preliminary studies on the groundwater source for Arivaca, AZ, suggest that recharge comes from contemporary monsoon rains. This project investigated the relationship between climate variability and groundwater to assess the vul­nerability of this community’s principal water source to drought; it also investigated options for sustainable water management.