UA News

A proposed national climate service would integrate the work of more than a dozen federal agencies, but needs to provide useful information to local water managers.

A decades-old idea for creating a national climate service appears near to becoming a reality, but a researcher at The University of Arizona said adequate funding will determine its success. 

Scientists from a variety of groups and agencies have been accumulating data on weather and climate change for decades, but translating all of that work into useful information for water managers who need it most has been "woefully inadequate," according to Katharine Jacobs, a researcher at the UA.

Jacobs is scheduled to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Thursday. She is expected to inform senators that the scientific community has made great strides in understanding climate variability and climate change, but much of that information is lost on both the public and those managing local water supplies.

"I have been in countless meetings where this gap between science and society has been lamented, but with a few notable exceptions, very little progress has been made in addressing this problem," Jacobs said in her prepared remarks.

Scientists and managers often fail to understand each others' vocabularies and motivations, saying that climate change information also has been highly politicized, leading people to "incorrect conclusions" about the quality of the information and the degree of certainty that exists. 

The largest challenge for the new climate center, she said, is finding the funds necessary to turn science into decision support tools and timely, relevant sources of information.  Federal agencies, notably NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have spent billions on satellites, monitoring equipment and computers.

"The only way that the new national climate service will succeed is if it empowers a multitude of regional support networks and centers to engage the public and decision makers at local scales," she said.

The new center will need a well-coordinated science team with adequate federal support for the network, Jacobs said. She believes water supplies in the western U.S. are particularly vulnerable due to the impact of higher temperatures on the hydrologic cycle, including drier soils, reduced runoff, increased evaporation from reservoirs and rising demand for water both from the public and from ecosystems.

Jacobs cited recent climate model information that suggests the Southwest will likely experience reduced precipitation and as much as a 20 percent decrease in the Colorado River.

"This is not a happy circumstance for the nearly 30 million people that depend on its flows," Jacobs said.

In addition to funding, the keys to a successful climate service, she said, includes broad, inclusive vision; addressing both climate variability and change across time and space; and strong leaders with the authority to mandate the integration of federal science capacity to support decisions.

The federal government has spent an estimated $30 billion in the last eight years on climate science, she said.

"Given the magnitude of this investment, it is clearly time to take stock of what we do know, and though we haven't answered every question, empower decision makers to access and use that information with full understanding of its limitations," Jacobs said. "Clearly we need to keep investing in research on both climate variability and on climate change – but it is time to get more value out of the investments that we have made."