Download Integrating climate science with regional planning and policy

Integrating climate science
with regional planning and
policy: Insights on from user
studies
Andrea J. Ray, Ph.D
NOAA Earth Systems Research Lab (ESRL)
and the NOAA-Univ of Colorado Western
Water Assessment
The User and the GEOSS Architecture IV
“Regional Decisions for Climate Change”
21 September 2007
Who am I?
Andrea J. Ray, Ph.D.:
 “Physical Scientist,” NOAA Earth Systems Research Lab, Physical
Sciences Division (formerly the Climate Diagnostics Center)
•Environment and society interactions, policy sciences, social science
methodologies
• Uses of information in natural resource management, especially
federal/state/regional govts (who has “agency”)
• Reduce vulnerability and raise resilience to climate variations by
better incorporating risk in planning at multiple time/space scales
• Applications of monsoon research (North American Monsoon
Experiment)
 Participant in the Western Water Assessment (WWA) and X-RISA
projects to feedback user perspectives to Climate Services
• Climate services needs of Front Range (CO) municipal water
suppliers; reservoir managers (Gunnison and Colorado Rivers) and
their stakeholders; infusion of climate in Gunnison NEPA/EIS planning
process; drought mitigation
• Edit the Intermountain West Climate Summary
(raising climate literacy among water managers
and policymakers)
Overview
• Users, who are they? who works with them? What
do they think about?
– Integrated Science and Assessments projects
– Findings of these projects about studying and working
with users
– Mechanisms to elicit user needs
• Differences in perspectives between scientists and
“users”
• A brief example, Colorado River management
• Brainstorm -- uses of GEOSS, who, for what, how
Who are the “Users”?
• Municipal/residential and industrial water users
and organizations
• Agricultural water users and organizations
• Government managers, regulators, policymakers,
planners (local, state, federal)
• Professional organizations & tnetworks of all of
these
• Scientists and engineers
• Providers of products and services
(govt, pvt, media)
• NGOs (e.g., biodiversity interests)
• Recreation interests, individual and companies
• Boundary organizations, which work between
scientists and users
• where do these water managers talk to each
other
•
Changing context of the management in
the Intermountain West region
• New and expanded uses
of/demands for water:
• Population boom in the Southwest
• Several tribal water rights
adjudicated
• Endangered species protection and
other environmental management
• Central Arizona Project on line
• California’s 4.4 MAF apportionment
has been re-negotiated
• USBR mission of multi-purpose
management continues to expand
• “Shortage sharing” agreement on the
Colorado River being negotiated
Impacts of long-term drought and
climate change???
Who studies users?
Integrated Science and Assessments
 Academic communities: natural hazards, climate and society
interactions, climate impacts studies; often environmenatl
geographers/anthropologists/political scientists
 Sensitivities and vulnerabilities to weather and climate, needs for
information, information pathways, institutional issues, capacity
issues
 NOAA RISA: Regional Integrated Science and Assessments
 NSF HERO: Human Environment Research Observatories
 Int’l Human Dimensions of Global Change Program
 New focus under CLIVAR
 Others, NSF-, NASA-, NOAA-funded, also foundations, esp. for
climate change
 Ongoing efforts with existing user-partnerships
Regional Integrated Science & Assessments (RISA)
• Eight regional projects, US and border focus, earliest began ~1995;
primarily empirical studies
• Mechanisms to elicit and understand user needs
–
–
–
–
Perception, cognitive, communications studies
Integrate and synthesize needs across groups
Determine what services should be: part of a dialogue about risks
Take advantage of social science studies of cognition, adoption and diffusion of
innovations, and methodologies
– Focus on users’ problem orientations: drought, hydropower, multi-purpose
reservoir management; long-term planning; annual planning
• Decision studies of water management and agriculture
– Characterize decisions and decisionmakers
– Institutional/legal
– Organizational/behavioral
• Experiments in communicating with stakeholders and in creating and
sustaining partnerships over time
– Reservoir management, drought task forces, climate change and state
water supply planning
Some perspectives from user studies:
Recognize and expand our perspectives as
scientists on production of knowledge
• Information as a
commodity
• Externally generated,
research-based
information
[legitimacy]
• Decisions based on
efficiency,
optimization
• Methodologies for
providing model
output as the end
product to
operational
management
Pulwarty and Jacobs, 2005
• Information as a process of
negotiation, i.e., what
information is needed in a
given context, i.e. drought, and
for a given sector)
• Information produced within
management organizations or
agencies or by accustomed
source
• Decisions based on
acknowledgement of
interdependence of
organizations & missions
• Dialogue about risks vs.
constructing and delivering a
risk message; climate- related
decision support systems
Perspectives from user studies: What do they
want?
Historical data & projections of these at a basin scale
• Snowpack/SWE
• Soil moisture
• Streamflow
current/forecasted
• Timing of spring peak;
“holes” in a river (low flows)
• Reservoir levels
• Ground water
• Surface water supply index
(SWSI)
• Palmer Drought Index
• Temperature
• Evapotranspiration,
evaporative losses
• Demand metrics, water and
hydropower
• Outlooks of these, and how
ppt and temp outlooks relate,
e.g., ppt needed to raise
levels to near-average or
other thresholds
Perspectives from user studies: Users needs
Longer-range questions
• Increasing requests for information on interannual and
decadal time scales (5, 10, 15 years into the future)
• Reservoir inflows over several years (at least 2)
• Drought outlooks over the next decade
• “Can we produce reliable baselines for planning to give the
large amount of year to year and decade to decade
variations?”
•“Are the assumptions of planning borne out under
projections of varying and changing climates?”
• e.g. 1906 Rio Grande treaty definition of “extra-ordinary
drought” invoked 14 times over the last 50 years
•“Do present simulations of change adequately represent
modes of variations (ENSO, NAO, PDO etc.) ?”
Example of long term planning and climate:
Drought impacts on Lake Powell
•
2007 water year runoff into Lake
Powell was 51%average
•
Demands on the river are
increasing -- recall changing
context in the West
•
Lake Powell elevation has
dropped more quickly in the recent
drought than in a study of a 35-yr
period of low flows, the most
severe period in the paleo record
(Stockton and Jacoby,1976)
•
Risk of call on the river? Upper
Basin States (CO, WY, UT, NM)
may soon be required to cease
water diversions that are junior to
the 1922 Colorado Compact in
order to meet obligations to
downstream users
What if climate change reduces
flows on the River?
•
From Harding, 2006, www.hydrosphere.com
Points of Vulnerability
• Generally similar to those found in the 1995
SSD, but more sensitive because of
increased consumptive uses
• In order of water rights: Upper basin, UB
rights junior to compact
• Non-allocated uses, e.g. recreational and
environmental are particularly sensitive, yet
these have increased in economic
importance
• In the event of a shortage, vague and often
contradictory laws and policy mandates
• 2006-2007 policy landscape provides
opportunities to incorporate climate
information
• USBR Long term planning, evolution
of operating criteria
However, in the event of a shortage,
vague and often contradictory laws and
policy mandates
Non-allocated uses, e.g. recreational
and environmental are particularly
sensitive, yet these have increased in
economic importance
2007 policy landscape provides
opportunities to incorporate climate
information:
Ongoing implementation of endangered
species recovery plans (MSCP, CRRIP)
and Glen Canyon Adaptive Management
Program
Shortage sharing agreement,” EIS and
the Environmental Impact Statement for
the Aspinall Unit on the Gunnison River
Opportunities
What’s needed for decision support
• Beyond forecasts --> “Services”
• Dialogue about climate-related risks with policy and
planning for 20-50 year horizons
– Not forecasting for these horizons, but long-lived policies likely to
encounter multi-year droughts and impacts of observed trends
• Synthesis of research into products & analysis that
connect climate impacts to water management impacts:
Temperature --> evaporation, rain/snow mix, urban demand, length
of growing season
Timing of spring runoff (Dettinger, Cayan) --> water rights, reservoir
reliability
Synchroneity (Hamlet, Jain) --> diversity of supply sources
• Interest in these for the Shortage Sharing EIS for Lakes
Powell and Mead
Some conclusions from across user studies:
needs for water-related decisionmaking
• water managers are often sophisticated about technical information, but
not climate experts -- Scientists need to collaborate in a common language
• Variables and indices
• flexible formats, areas, time scales
• tools to relate observations, historical data, and forecasts to water
managers perspectives, e.g. to their problems
•Ways to look at information from multiple sources together
• Ways to evaluate climate scenarios in their management scenarios
• Tools for managers to talk to their stakeholders
• Benchmarks beyond “idealized value”
• Partnerships
• Interactions maintained over time
• Influence of scientists on the drought planning process and of water
managers on science done
• Innovation in both science and management from interaction
• Fora for communication, learning, bringing perspectives together
Differences in perspective: scientists, managers, GEOSS architects??
Factor
Scientist’s perspective
Water Manager’s Perspective
Identifying a critical
issue
Based on a broad understanding of the nature of water
management
Based on experience of a particular system
Time frame
Variable
Immediate (operations)
Long-term (infrastructure)
Spatial resolution
Defined by data availability or funding
Defined by institutional boundaries or authorities
Goals
Prediction
Explanation
Understanding of natural system
Optimization of multiple conditions and minimization of risk
Basis for Decisions
Generalizing multiple facts and observations
Use of scientific procedures and methods
Availability of research funding
Disciplinary perspective
Tradition; Procedure
Professional judgment; Training
Economics; Politics
Job risks
Expectation
Understanding
Prediction
Ongoing improvement (project is never actually complete)
Statistical significance of results
Innovations in methods/theory
Accuracy of information
Appropriate methodology
Save money and time; Protect the public;
Protect their jobs, agendas or institutions
Product
Characteristics
Complex
Scientifically defensible
As simple as possible without losing accuracy
Importance of context
Frame
Physical (atmospheric, hydrologic, etc.) conditions as
drivers
Dependent on scientific discipline
Safety and well being
Profit
Consistency with institutional culture, policy, etc.
Nature of Use
Conceptual
Applied
Brainstorming -- uses of GEOSS, who,
for what, how
• Long range planning by agencies at multiple space
and time scales
– Federal: USBR (reservoir plans), USFS (forest management
plans), Drought/NIDIS (mitigation planning)
– State
– Regional and local govts (e.g. Denver Water)
• Support climate services providers’ dialogue with users
about risks ->
• Support water managers and planners’ dialogues with
their own stakeholders
• Example from the California Assessment Progect (RISA)
• Participates in state meetings on water planning
• Key information -- in user-relevant variables and in context
of related water and other information -- galvanized interest
from state legislature
Brainstorming II-- uses of GEOSS, who,
for what, how
• Reducing vulnerability requires consideration of a range
of climate scenarios in planning and policy development
– multi-year droughts and the impacts increased temperatures
– Support for 20-50 yr planning horizons
• Capability to view and compare information from multiple sources
– Need user-oriented metadata, descriptions
– GIS widely used by resource agencies, state/local planners, but climate
information has not generally provided by NOAA in these formats
– Connect types of data and projections
• Work with Integrated Assessment groups
– connect with spefic user group,
– elicit and understand detailed user needs and common needs
– have long-term partnerships and experiment with communicating
information and aboutrisk
– Understand the pathways that are used for information
Thank you
Andrea J. Ray, Ph.D
NOAA Earth Systems Research Lab
[email protected]