CSTPR Noontime Seminar

Sustained assessment in the US southwest by Benét Duncan, Western Water Assessment, University of Colorado Boulder
This talk will be available via webcast here.
The US National Climate Assessment provides foundational information about the impacts of climate change in large assessment reports that are released every four years. In the most recent report (NCA3), authors highlighted the value of developing a sustained national climate assessment in which information is produced on an ongoing basis. In the Sustained Climate Assessment in the Southwest project, researchers at Western Water Assessment are investigating opportunities for sustained climate assessment in the US Southwest National Climate Assessment (NCA) region – an area that consists of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. This work is focused on developing recommendations for an ongoing, regional climate assessment process in collaboration with climate service providers and users. Such a process would provide timely and regionally-relevant climate information that is sometimes more detailed than what can be included in a national-scale assessment like the NCA. It would also connect climate information providers and users to increase understanding of climate impacts in decision-making contexts, and build a foundation of knowledge and relationships that can be drawn on in larger-scale assessment processes.
This talk will focus on the history of sustained climate assessment and the value of a regional approach, and explore opportunities and challenges that have arisen in the process of developing recommendations for a regional assessment process.
Biography: Benét Duncan is Western Water Assessment's Climate Assessment Specialist, and she is leading the Sustained Climate Assessment in the Southwest project. She works to understand how organizations produce climate services and the climate information needs of stakeholders in our region with the ultimate goal of contributing to a regional and national scale sustained climate assessment infrastructure. Prior to joining WWA, Benét worked at the science-policy interface with the California Ocean Science Trust. Before that, she was a postdoctoral fellow in UCAR’s Postdocs Applying Climate Expertise (PACE) program, hosted by Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Benét received her MS and PhD in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from the University of Colorado, and her BS in Atmospheric Science from the University of California Davis.