Support cross-regional efforts to assess user needs, test drought-focused decision support tools ... more Support cross-regional efforts to assess user needs, test drought-focused decision support tools Identify socio-economic effects of drought, data and info needs of resource managers and policy/decision makers Evaluate and transition drought information products to emergency reponse AND Drought Preparedness and risk management planning
The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) is an interagency and interstate effor... more The National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) is an interagency and interstate effort to establish a national drought early warning information system. NIDIS builds on existing products and service networks like the U.S. Drought Monitor and Seasonal Outlooks to provide better coordination of monitoring, forecasting, and impact assessment efforts at national, watershed, state, and local levels. NIDIS is providing a better understanding of how and why droughts affect society, the economy, and the environment, and is improving accessibility, dissemination, and use of early warning information for drought risk management. NIDIS incorporates numerous federal agencies, tribal nations, emergency managers and planners, six Regional Climate Centers, Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA), state climatologists, and local National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Forecast Offices.
VIDEO: Session 4: Climate Change and The Environment
VIDEO: 3:45 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. SESSION 4: Climate Change and The Environment Moderator: Brad Udall,... more VIDEO: 3:45 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. SESSION 4: Climate Change and The Environment Moderator: Brad Udall, University of Colorado Law School Speakers: Margaret Hiza Redsteer, U.S. Geological Service Amelia Peterson, Governors\u27 Climate & Forests Task Force Roger Pulwarty, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administratio
Attempts to bridge the gap between those who generate scientific information and those who use it... more Attempts to bridge the gap between those who generate scientific information and those who use it have not always been successful. This is true in part because most research methodologies encourage a relatively narrow, disciplinary focus on questions, frequently avoiding the complexities and interdependencies of the “real” world. A true dialog between end users of climate information and those who generate data is rarely achieved. Improved scientific information is important to managing water supplies in the context of increasing competition for water. However, scientists may not fully understand the context within which water management decisions are made, or have the appropriate training to ensure that the information that they produce is useful. There are major limitations to the applicability of current scientific products, in part because they are generated without a full understanding of institutional and political limitations to using the products in implementing new manageme...
Presentation provided by the secretariat of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Workin... more Presentation provided by the secretariat of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group III, summarizing the main findings of the Working Group's Fifth Assessment Report.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2020
The 2017 flash drought arrived without early warning and devastated the U.S. northern Great Plain... more The 2017 flash drought arrived without early warning and devastated the U.S. northern Great Plains region comprising Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota and the adjacent Canadian Prairies. The drought led to agricultural production losses exceeding $2.6 billion in the United States, widespread wildfires, poor air quality, damaged ecosystems, and degraded mental health. These effects motivated a multiagency collaboration among academic, tribal, state, and federal partners to evaluate drought early warning systems, coordination efforts, communication, and management practices with the goal of improving resilience and response to future droughts. This essay provides an overview on the causes, predictability, and historical context of the drought, the impacts of the drought, opportunities for drought early warning, and an inventory of lessons learned. Key lessons learned include the following: 1) building partnerships during nondrought periods helps ensure that proper relationships ...
Flash droughts are a recently recognized type of extreme event distinguished by sudden onset and ... more Flash droughts are a recently recognized type of extreme event distinguished by sudden onset and rapid intensification of drought conditions with severe impacts. They unfold on subseasonal-to-seasonal timescales (weeks to months), presenting a new challenge for the surge of interest in improving subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction. Here we discuss existing prediction capability for flash droughts and what is needed to establish their predictability. We place them in the context of synoptic to centennial phenomena, consider how they could be incorporated into early warning systems and risk management, and propose two definitions. The growing awareness that flash droughts involve particular processes and severe impacts, and probably a climate change dimension, makes them a compelling frontier for research, monitoring and prediction.
The drought of the 1950s was among the most widespread, severe and sustained ever experienced in ... more The drought of the 1950s was among the most widespread, severe and sustained ever experienced in the United States. For several states, the severity of the 1950s drought exceeded that of the 1930s "Dust Bowl". The 1950s were characterized by low rainfall amounts and by excessively high temperatures. The climatological aspects of the drought subsided in most areas with the spring rains of 1957. A careful review of official reports over this period reveals limited acknowledgment of the drought of the 1950s. The drought was no secret, but it did not receive a great deal of news coverage; later droughts of lower severity and shorter duration, such as 1976 -77, 1988 , 2011 -2012 and the ongoing drought in California (2011, garnered much greater national focus. In this paper, the question why such a major geophysical variation appears to have elicited little major national policy response, including the apparent lack of significant media concern is addressed. In framing the discussion this study assesses, the evolution of drought during the 1950s to establish its national and regional policy contexts, technological improvements and financial changes prior to and during the event, and on and off-farm responses in terms of the socioeconomic impacts. The study provides an overview of key developments and concerns in agriculture since the early 20th Century sets the context for the 1950s, then moves to the farm itself as a unit of analysis. This approach shows not only how the situation may have appeared to those outside the afflicted areas, but also how decisions were guided by agricultural economics affecting farmers at the time, and the strong influence of broader historical trends in which the 1950s were embedded. The paper provides the relevant agricultural statistics and uncovers the political and public perceptions moving through the drought years. Overproduction was the fundamental, almost paradoxical problem facing American agriculture at the time. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the implications of this event, and the attendant responses, might provide guidance to future assessments of extremes such as severe drought in the context of a changing climate.
Climate variability and change have long posed substantial challenges for social, economic and na... more Climate variability and change have long posed substantial challenges for social, economic and natural systems throughout the world. Incorporating information about climate fluctuations and their impacts is an increasingly important component of risk management and planning in key socio-economic sectors. Understanding and meeting these challenges through effective risk management strategies that foster preparedness, impact mitigation, and adaptation requires a long-term investment in and commitment to sound science, transition, and translation of information among communities, and the application and evaluation of climate services and decision support resources. This science should be developed, implemented and applied in the context of the practical needs and capabilities of communities, stakeholders, and socio-economic sectors if it is to inform resource management challenges, and contribute to the field of study of climate, climate information services, preparedness and adaptation. During the early 1990s, the United States expressed a desire to capitalize on emerging developments in atmospheric and oceanic research and early climate impact studies, in order to develop the institutional capacity to meet these needs on global and regional scales. As a member of the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and working in partnership with the international scientific and governmental community, NOAA led the development of an international research institute, which is known today as the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). Over several decades -from the initial conceptual and demonstration phases, to today's mature institution -IRI had a substantial influence in linking science and action to risk management. This essay briefly reflects upon the initial vision for and evolution of the IRI; the importance of investments in endeavors of this nature to the US climate research and services communities, including model development, climate prediction and integrated research and assessments; and the value of such an institution to a Federal entity concerned with development and risk management in developing countries -the US Agency for International Development (USAID). We conclude with some thoughts about future directions.
Chapter 4 Recommendations for Improving our Understanding
century. However, there remains uncertainty in both observed changes, due to the quality and homo... more century. However, there remains uncertainty in both observed changes, due to the quality and homogeneity of the observations, and in model projection, due to constraints in model formulation, in a number of other types of climate extremes, including tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, tornadoes, and thunderstorms.
Informing climate-related decisions in complex river basins: A comparative assessment
Integrated water resources management provides an important governance framework to achieve clima... more Integrated water resources management provides an important governance framework to achieve climate-related adaptation measures across socio-economic, environmental and administrative systems. Adaptation includes technical changes that improve water use efficiency, early warning, demand management (e.g. through metering and pricing), and institutional changes that improve the tradability of water rights. Supply-side strategies generally involve increases in storage capacity, abstraction from watercourses, and water transfers. Incentives for improving water-use efficiency, hold considerable promise for water savings and the reallocation of water to highly valued uses. However, conflicts exist between processes and goals of water management and governance. These militate against the effectiveness of using scientific information to meet short-term needs in the context of reducing longer-term vulnerabilities such as for ``increasing water supply while meeting environmental needs.'&...
Present climate of northwestern South America and the southern Isthmus is detailed in terms of ma... more Present climate of northwestern South America and the southern Isthmus is detailed in terms of major hydro-climatic controls, supported by evidence from station records, reanalysis data and satellite information. In this tropical region, precipitation is the principal hydro-climatological variable to display great variability. The primary objective is to view the controls that operate at intra-seasonal to inter-decadal time scales. This is a topographical complex region whose climate influences range in provenance from the South Atlantic to the Canadian Prairies, and from the North Atlantic to the Eastern Pacific. The situation is further complicated by interactions and feedbacks, in time and space, between these influences, which are interconnected over various scales. The greatest single control on the annual cycle is the meridional migration of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone and its pattern of associated trade winds. Consideration of these alone and their interaction with the Cordilleras of the Andes and Central America produce a variety of unimodal and bimodal regimes. Regionally, two low level jet streams, the westerly Choco jet (58N) and the easterly San Andre ´s jet (12-148N), and their seasonal variability, have tremendous significance, as do mesoscale convective storms and mid-latitude cold fronts from both the northern (bnortesQ) and southern (bfriagemsQ) hemispheres. There are many examples of hydro-climatological feedbacks within the region. Of these the most notable is the interaction between evaporation over the Amazon, precipitation onto the eastern Andes and streamflow from the headwaters of the Amazon. This is further compounded by the high percentages of recycled precipitation over large areas of the tropics and the potential impacts of anthropogenic modification of the land surface. The El Nin ˜o-Southern Oscillation phenomenon (ENSO) is the greatest single cause of interannual variability within the region, yet its effects are not universal in their timing, sign or magnitude. A set of regional physical connections to ENSO are established and their varying local manifestations are viewed in the context of the dominant precipitation generating mechanisms and feedbacks at that location. In addition, some potential impacts of longer run variations within the ocean-atmosphere system of the Atlantic are examined independently and in conjunction with ENSO. This review of the climatic controls and feedbacks in the region provides a spatial and temporal framework within which the highly complex set of factors and their interactions may be interpreted from the past.
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Papers by Roger Pulwarty