PA13C-1349
Results of the UCAR 2008 Forum on Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
Mayors, governors, and local decision makers are developing climate change action plans. They are not
waiting for the federal carbon emission reduction debates to conclude (e.g., cap and trade or carbon tax
legislation). Many of them are struggling with what should be in these plans, what they should be assuming
about future weather and climate trends, and what the impact might be on their community and its
infrastructure. In October 2008, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research held a forum at its 2008
Members' Meeting that focused on the UCAR community's role in climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Many of UCAR's 71 university members are involved in projects with local and regional decision makers
struggling with planning for the future in the face of climate change. The forum focused on the following
questions: 1. How are these projects working and what lessons have we learned? 2. What can our community
can do to assist these partnerships (e.g., models and other tools, better information, training opportunities,
outreach, sharing ideas, etc.)? 3. Can we help our nation deal more effectively with climate mitigation and
adaptation by being more strategic with these partnerships (e.g., more coordination, creating packages of
tools and information, creating common approaches to climate action plans, developing better communication
tools, community strategic planning effort, etc.)? This presentation will provide a summary of the forum
outcomes.
http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct08/forum.shtml#registration
PA13C-1350
The Nested Regional Climate Model: An Approach Toward Prediction Across Scales
The reality of global climate change has become accepted and society is rapidly moving to questions of consequences on space and time scales that are relevant to proper planning and development of adaptation strategies. There are a number of urgent challenges for the scientific community related to improved and more detailed predictions of regional climate change on decadal time scales. Two important examples are potential impacts of climate change on North Atlantic hurricane activity and on water resources over the intermountain West. The latter is dominated by complex topography, so that accurate simulations of regional climate variability and change require much finer spatial resolution than is provided with state-of-the-art climate models. Climate models also do not explicitly resolve tropical cyclones, even though these storms have dramatic societal impacts and play an important role in regulating climate. Moreover, the debate over the impact of global warming on tropical cyclones has at times been acrimonious, and the lack of hard evidence has left open opportunities for misinterpretation and justification of pre-existing beliefs. These and similar topics are being assessed at NCAR, in partnership with university colleagues, through the development of a Nested Regional Climate Model (NRCM). This is an ambitious effort to combine a state of the science mesoscale weather model (WRF), a high resolution regional ocean modeling system (ROMS), and a climate model (CCSM) to better simulate the complex, multi-scale interactions intrinsic to atmospheric and oceanic fluid motions that are limiting our ability to predict likely future changes in regional weather statistics and climate. The NRCM effort is attracting a large base of earth system scientists together with societal groups as diverse as the Western Governor's Association and the offshore oil industry. All of these groups require climate data on scales of a few kilometers (or less), so that the NRCM program is producing unique data sets of climate change scenarios of immense interest. In addition, all simulations are archived in a form that will be readily accessible to other researchers, thus enabling a wider group to investigate these important issues.
PA13C-1351
What Climate Information Do Water Managers Need to Make Robust, Long-Term Plans?
What climate information do water managers need to respond to threat of climate change? Southern
California's Inland Empire Utilities Agency (IEUA) completed a long-range water resource management plan in
2005 that addressed expected economic and population growth in their service region, but did not consider
the potential impacts of climate change. Using a robust decision making (RDM) approach for policy under
deep uncertainty, we recently worked with IEUA to conduct a climate-change vulnerability and response
options analysis of the agency's long-range plans. This analysis suggests that IEUA is vulnerable to future
climate change, but can significantly reduce this vulnerability by increasing their near-term conservation
programs and careful monitoring and updating to adjust their plan in the years ahead. In addition to helping
IEUA, this analysis provides important guidance on the types of climate and other information that can be
most useful for water managers as they attempt to take robust, near-term actions to increaase their resilience
to climate change.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR505/
PA13C-1352
Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy: Partnering with Decision-Makers in Climate Change Adaptation
The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP; www.uaf.edu/accap) is one of several, NOAA funded, Regional Integrated Science and Policy (RISA) programs nation-wide (http://www.climate.noaa.gov/cpo_pa/risa/). Our mission is to assess the socio-economic and biophysical impacts of climate variability in Alaska, make this information available to local and regional decision-makers, and improve the ability of Alaskans to adapt to a changing climate. We partner with the University of Alaska?s Scenario Network for Alaska Planning (SNAP; http://www.snap.uaf.edu/), state and local government, state and federal agencies, industry, and non-profit organizations to communicate accurate and up-to-date climate science and assist in formulating adaptation and mitigation plans. ACCAP and SNAP scientists are members of the Governor?s Climate Change Sub-Cabinet Adaptation and Mitigation Advisory and Technical Working Groups (http://www.climatechange.alaska.gov/), and apply their scientific expertise to provide down-scaled, state-wide maps of temperature and precipitation projections for these groups. An ACCAP scientist also serves as co-chair for the Fairbanks North Star Borough Climate Change Task Force, assisting this group as they work through the five-step model for climate change planning put forward by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (http://www.investfairbanks.com/Taskforces/climate.php). ACCAP scientists work closely with federal resource managers in on a range of projects including: partnering with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to analyze hydrologic changes associated with climate change and related ecological impacts and wildlife management and development issues on Alaska?s North Slope; partnering with members of the Alaska Interagency Wildland Fire Coordinating Group in statistical modeling to predict seasonal wildfire activity and coordinate fire suppression resources state-wide; and working with Alaska Native Elders and resource managers to document traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and integrate this knowledge with Western science for crafting adaptation response to climate impacts in rural Native Alaska.
PA13C-1353
Adaptation Planning for Water Resources Management in the Context of Scientific Uncertainty
Several municipalities are beginning to create policies and plans in order to adapt to potential impacts from climate change. A 2007 report from the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, 'A Survey of Climate Change Adaptation Planning,' surveyed fourteen cities or counties across the U.S. and Canada that have created or are working towards creating climate change adaptation plans. Informal interactions with water managers in the Intermountain West indicate an eagerness to learn from those who have already begun adapting to potential climate change. Many of those without plans do not feel comfortable making potentially expensive long-term policy decisions based on impacts derived from uncertain climate change projections. This research identifies how decision makers currently consider climate change in adaptation planning despite imperfect information about climate change impacts, particularly in the water sector. Insights are offered into how best to provide information on climate change projections to regional decision makers so that they can begin adaptation planning for a changing climate. This research analyzes how a subset of the fourteen municipalities justified adaptive planning in the face of scientific uncertainty, paying particular attention to water resource adaptation, using the adaptation approaches studied in the 2007 Heinz Center Report. Interviews will be conducted with decision makers to learn how policies will be implemented and evaluated, and to explore resulting changes in policy or planning. Adaptation strategies are not assessed, but are used to identify how the decision makers plan to evaluate their own adaptation policies. In addition to looking at information use in adaptation plans, we compare how the plans orient themselves (adapting to projected impacts vs. increasing resiliency to current climate variability), how they address barriers and opportunities for adaptation, and whether they follow some key steps for successful adaptation as outlined in the literature. This part of the study will identify any consensus among the municipalities already adapting, and see of the decision makers tend to agree with the points of views expressed in the literature. The conclusions here will not only help decision makers trying to adapt, but it will help researchers orient future research to the informational needs of the decision makers. The work is intended to provide useful information for the Western Water Assessment, a NOAA-funded research boundary organization, which provides climate information to water resource managers in the Intermountain West, including the Colorado River Basin.
PA13C-1354
Energy and Water Resources in a Changing Climate: Towards Adaptation Options in Colorado and the Western US
Greater energy demands are driving development of domestic energy resources and advancement of fossil- fuel independent energy technologies. However, water is necessary for most energy production. Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing global temperatures, impacting the quality and quantity of water resources. Warming temperatures are also altering the timing and nature of energy demand. As water is necessary for energy production, and energy is needed for the water supply, climate change will further exacerbate the interplay between these two sectors and create additional challenges in adaptive planning. The geology of Colorado is such that it has both carbon (oil shale, coal, coal-bed methane) and non-fossil-fuel (geothermal, winds) energy resources. There is an increasing need to develop these resources, but the impact on the region's water supply is often neglected, as is the energy required to support the water infrastructure. The Western US is prone to drought, and Colorado has experienced periodic drought throughout the observational record. Temperatures in Colorado have risen by about 1°C in the past 30 years, and are projected to increase an additional 2°C by 2050. Precipitation is highly variable and will continue to be in the future, but more severe and persistent droughts are anticipated. To investigate the impact of climate change on the energy-water nexus, in order to evaluate the information necessary to undertake more comprehensive regional impact and adaptation studies, the energy intensity of Colorado's water systems, and water usage by energy sector, are presented. The interdependence of water and energy necessitates that scientists work with decision-makers and consider both sectors when developing climate adaptation strategies. This work represents initial efforts towards a more comprehensive, collaborative analysis of climate change impacts on water and energy supply in support of adaptive management approaches in the Western US.
PA13C-1355
A New Approach for Scenario Development for Future Assessments in the IPCC
Scenarios of possible socio-economic futures, emissions, and resulting changes in climate are used widely to assess the potential consequences of climate change and proposed response measures (mitigation and adaptation). They are especially useful to evaluate climate targets to avoid risks from climate change impacts, understand risks of major biogeophysical change and feedback effects, and identify climate policy strategies that are robust to uncertainties. A new, integrative approach for scenario development proposed for a next generation of integrated scenarios by researchers from the climate modeling (CM) community, the integrated assessment modeling (IAM) community (which prepares the socio-economic scenarios, including land use and emissions), and the impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV) community is discussed, focusing on the preparation and use of Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). It is anticipated that this stronger coordination between IPCC working groups and associated communities will generate information and opportunities for communication for decision and policy makers across relevant scales.
PA13C-1356
Managing Earth to Make Future Development More Sustainable: Learning From a Megacity Like Hong Kong
Selected recent findings related to climate change in Hong Kong include: (1) The Hong Kong seafloor has yielded a ~0.5-million year record of climate and sea-level changes. (2) Greenhouse gases produced naturally from sub-aerially exposed continental shelves were a probable forcing mechanism in triggering the termination of past ice ages. (3) An analysis of annual mean temperature records has revealed that the urban heat island effect has contributed ~75 % of the warming. (4) Past volcanic eruptions are found to lower Hong Kong's temperature and to cause extremely dry and wet years. (5) No evidence can be found for an increase in frequency and intensity of typhoons based on the analysis of an 8,000-year record in the Pearl River Estuary. (6) The observed rate of sea-level rise in the South China Sea is much slower than the predictions of the IPCC Fourth Assessment. For the Earth's management, population growth and the depletion of non-renewable resources must be recognized as unsustainable. The human impact on the natural hydrological cycle is an important forcing mechanism in climate change. In order to delay the demise of the human race, management must include curbing population growth and much more waste recycling than at present.