When

Presented by: Joel B. Smith Registration link: Register in advance for this meeting: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0ocuyurT4pHNOkHKONQaLd-Wyq2G9Mos_j After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Abstract: In my early days of assessing climate change vulnerability and adaptation, I was relatively optimistic about the ability of the United States to adapt its “managed systems” to the projected climate change impacts. Managed systems have active human involvement such as management of coasts abutting settlements, water supplies, and flood management. In contrast, I have always been concerned about climate change impacts on natural ecosystems and developing countries because of a relative lack of adaptive capacity. My optimism was born from assumptions that anthropogenically induced climate change would involve a gradual change in climate and, we assumed, small changes in variability. I also assumed that with our wealth, technical capacity, and strong governance, we could take the steps to substantially reduce potentially adverse impacts of climate change. Our society had built major water and transportation within a few decades, at a faster commensurate or faster than projected rates of climate change. This did not assume that we would get everything right and not make mistakes, but that we could largely manage the increased risks. Based on how the climate is changing and the difficulties we as a country have in addressing major challenges, I am now more pessimistic about how well we will do adapting to climate change. While temperatures are rising as had been forecast, sea levels may rise more than had been projected, and we are already seeing increases in climate variability and unexpected changes in hurricane formation and movement and in the extent of fires and fire behavior. As these changes in climate have been emerging, our ability to adapt to them appears to be more limited. Our political system can work to address serious problems when a broad consensus exists about the nature of problems and the need for action. We are a very divided country politically, unable to agree about the science of such pressing problems as climate change and even the coronavirus. Our society seems incapable of addressing long term problems such as the general decay in infrastructure or decreasing public funding for education. Will we be able to overcome such problems to not only substantially reduce our greenhouse gas emissions but invest hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars needed to adapt to observed and anticipated changes in climate? While we have the wealth, technology, and governance systems that enable us to adequately respond to emerging challenges such as climate change, will the combination of more destructive changes in climate and our inability to effectively overcome major policy challenges cause us to experience more adverse impacts of climate change than had been thought? Based on what I see I am concerned it could turn out that way. I will focus on fire and risks to the wildland urban interface as an example of rapidly growing climate risks managed through decentralized and inconsistent policy processes that may not be up to the major challenge of adaptation. About the speaker: Joel B. Smith has been analyzing climate change impacts and adaptation issues for over three decades. He was a coordinating lead author or lead author on the Third, Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Mr. Smith was an author on three U.S. National Climate Change Assessments (NCA), including Chapter Lead on the International Chapter for the fourth NCA. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences “Panel on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change.” Mr. Smith has provided technical advice, guidance, and training on assessing climate change impacts and adaptation to people around the world and to international organizations, the U.S. government, states, municipalities, and the non-profit and private sectors. He worked for the U.S. EPA from 1984 to 1992, where he was the deputy director of Climate Change Division. He has been a consultant since 1992 and is now an independent consultant. Mr. Smith was a coeditor of The Potential Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States (1989), As Climate Changes: International Impacts and Implications (1995), Adaptation to Climate Change: Assessments and Issues (1996), Climate Change, Adaptive Capacity, and Development (2003), and The Impact of Climate Change on Regional Systems: A Comprehensive Analysis of California (2006). He has published more than 75 articles and chapters on climate change impacts and adaptation in peer-reviewed journals and books and has edited a number of books on climate change. Mr. Smith received a BA from Williams College in 1979 (graduating magna cum laude), and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan in 1982.

Phil Higuera Gives Wildfire Talk at National Academies of Science Board in Agriculture and Natural Resources Public Session

On December 8th, NC CASC PI Phil Higuera gave an overview talk, “Past and Future Ecological Effects of Wildfire” in a 90-minute opening session of the National Academies of Science (NAS) Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources Public Session.

Read the Latest Tribal Climate Newsletter

The December 2020 edition of the Tribal Climate Newsletter is released.

New Drought Portal Highlighted at AGU's 2020 Press Briefing

During a press briefing for AGU 2020, Kelsey Satalino from CIRES/NIDIS highlighted the National Integrated Drought Information System's (NIDIS) Drought Portal (drought.gov).

Abstract (from IOPScience): Ecological droughts are deficits in soil-water availability that induce threshold-like ecosystem responses, such as causing altered or degraded plant-community conditions, which can be exceedingly difficult to reverse. However, 'ecological drought' can be difficult to define, let alone to quantify, especially at spatial and temporal scales relevant to land managers. This is despite a growing need to integrate drought-related factors into management decisions as climate changes result in precipitation instability in many semi-arid ecosystems. We asked whether success in restoration seedings of the foundational species big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) was related to estimated water deficit, using the SoilWat2 model and data from >600 plots located in previously burned areas in the western United States. Water deficit was characterized by: 1) the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI), a coarse-scale drought index, and 2) the number of days with wet and warm conditions in the near-surface soil, where seeds and seedlings germinate and emerge (i.e. days with 0-5 cm deep soil water potential > -2.5 MPa and temperature above 0 °C). SPEI, a widely used drought index, was not predictive of whether sagebrush had reestablished. In contrast, wet-warm days elicited a critical drought threshold response, with successfully reestablished sites having experienced 7 more wet-warm days than unsuccessful sites during the first March following summer wildfire and restoration. Thus, seemingly small-scale and short-term changes in water availability and temperature can contribute to major ecosystem shifts, as many of these sites remained shrubless two decades later. These findings help clarify the definition of ecological drought for a foundational species and its imperiled semi-arid ecosystem. Drought is well known to affect the occurrence of wildfires, but drought in the year(s) after fire can determine whether fire causes long-lasting, negative impacts on ecosystems.

These data are 30m by 30 m grids of the mean Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) between 2001-2014 in the western United States. The SPEI index was developed by Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano and coauthors (https://spei.csic.es/index.html). Source evapotranspiration and precipitation data were generated by gridMET (http://www.climatologylab.org/gridmet.html).

The goal of Climate Futures Toolbox is to provide easy climate data access (MACA v2) to support climate scenario planning. This package allows you to: Quickly acquire climate data subsets for a spatial region of interest Summarize climate data at daily timesteps, and compute derived quantities Contrast reference and target time periods to understand differences in climate over time, and Easily work with climate data, without having to worry about the details of how it is stored or formatted

With support from the USGS Community for Data Integration (CDI), researchers at the North Central CASC will develop and implement an efficient and robust “Climate Scenarios Toolbox” to help on-the-ground management partners access and interpret relevant climate data, assess resource vulnerabilities to climate variability and change, and design adaptation strategies.