News
General Interest
CLIMAS receives $4.2 million from NOAA
September 25, 2007
By Stephanie Doster
The Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) project at The University of Arizona has received a $4.2 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for multi-pronged research that aims to improve society’s resilience to the effects of climate change and variability.
The five-year award will allow scientists to delve deeply into how society in the rapidly growing U.S. Southwest and border region will adapt to and absorb anticipated climate-related changes involving drought, floods, vector-borne diseases, increased temperatures, and scarcity of the region’s most precious resource: water.
“Look at the rapid decline of Colorado River reservoirs and the bark beetle outbreaks that have decimated stressed piñon pines in some areas,” said Gregg Garfin, a climatologist working on the project. “They are just two examples of changes we are seeing that require this kind of engaged, creative, university science working hand-in-hand, sleeves-rolled-up, with ranchers, farmers, water managers, municipal planners, and policy and decision makers to navigate some of the Southwest’s most pressing issues.”
The average annual temperature in the Southwest could rise by about 4 and a half to 7 or more degrees Fahrenheit during this century while precipitation totals drop, according to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Summary for Policymakers. Against this backdrop, rapid population growth, cultural diversity, and vulnerability to climate present major interconnected challenges in the arid southwestern United States.
In addition to steadily rising temperatures, resource and land managers face destructive floods, devastating wildfires, and withering droughts as they try to preserve water system, ecosystem and resource health. Local, state, and Native Nation governments, meanwhile, are also under pressure to maintain vital economic growth and quality of life for their citizens. The effects of climate shifts will force changes in every sector, including the multi-billion dollar ranching and agriculture industries, tourism- and recreation-based businesses, natural resource managers, and the general population, all of which are demanding the knowledge and decision-support tools they will need to adapt, said Garfin, who served as the CLIMAS program manager before becoming deputy director of outreach for the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth (ISPE).
The project will focus on five key areas: developing integrated decision-support tools for delivering climate information, making forecast evaluations, and assessing societal vulnerabilities to climate; assessing water and growth-related risk and resilience in the energy sector, irrigated agriculture, U.S. border cities, Native American communities, and critical watersheds; improving the understanding of climate variability and change; identifying the relationship between climate and diseases, such as the hanta and West Nile viruses; and enhancing the ways climate information and knowledge are communicated to those who need it.
The scope of the project requires a multidisciplinary team of researchers who can provide holistic insights into the thorny issues inherent in persistent drought and climate change. Jonathan Overpeck, a UA geosciences professor, director of ISPE, and a coordinating lead author of the latest IPCC report, is the project’s lead investigator. In addition to Overpeck and Garfin, the UA members of the team include Bonnie Colby and George Frisvold, Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics; Margaret Wilder, Center for Latin American Studies; Andrew Comrie, Department of Geography and Regional Development; Timothy Finan, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology; Katherine Hirschboeck, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research; and Holly Hartmann, Department of Hydrology and Water Resources and interim CLIMAS program manager. Deborah Bathke, Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the University of New Mexico, is also a researcher on the project and, in her capacity as assistant state climatologist, will work to help expand CLIMAS’ engagement with New Mexico stakeholders.
“Through the dynamic and integrated efforts of this team, CLIMAS is building the capacity for our region’s decision makers and citizens to tackle the environmental concerns of the twenty-first century,” Garfin added.
Launched in 1998 and housed in ISPE, the CLIMAS project has advanced as a leader in directing integrated climate-related research to address the unique human and ecological needs of the semi-arid Southwest U.S. and border region with Mexico. The most recent research—the third phase in an on-going, nine-year partnership between CLIMAS and NOAA —builds on extensive social, physical, and natural science research and outreach conducted by CLIMAS faculty and graduate students during the two previous phases.