HR: 10:40h
AN: A42A-02 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Regional Climate Variability and Decisionmaking in the Southwest
AU: * Garfin, G
EM: gmgarfin@email.arizona.edu
AF: CLIMAS/University of Arizona, 715 N. Park Ave., 2nd Fl., Tucson, AZ 85721-0156 United States
AB: The NOAA-funded Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) has been working with stakeholder-partners for six years to develop research, hydroclimate information products, and decision support tools that meet the needs of decisionmakers in Arizona and New Mexico. The goal of this user-inspired multidisciplinary research is to help reduce vulnerability to climate variability and change. CLIMAS has primarily examined climate variability and its impacts on the region. In the first phase of the project, CLIMAS researchers determined that interannual and decadal variability were topics more palatable to most decisionmakers than anthropogenic climate change. These topics are less emotionally charged, and easier to relate to stakeholder year-to-year operations and life experience. Our vision has been that by helping stakeholders to understand and prepare for climate variability and reduce their vulnerability to climate variability, we lay the foundation for decisionmakers to consider long-term anthropogenic climate changes their vulnerabilities to such changes. This presentation examines the role of understanding regional decisionmaking contexts in CLIMAS efforts to convey information on climate variability and its impacts to regional stakeholders.
DE: 3309 Climatology (1620)
DE: 0815 Informal education
DE: 0840 Evaluation and assessment
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting