Climate Change, Drought and Policymaking in the U.S. Southern Region
Funder: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
The availability of water to meet all the current and future needs for agriculture, industry, recreation, habitat preservation, and human consumption is of great concern to scientists and policy makers. Increased demands on water resources from all categories of users and possible changes in climate that could increase drought are increasingly worrying scientists and policy makers.
Identifying and examining trends, improving predictions of the availability of water in the future, and improving distribution of the use of water resources to maximize its benefits to all consumers is a huge task. Scientists and policy makers must work together to obtain the best scientific predictions of climate-related water resources, forecasting information must be communicated to stakeholders in useful and compelling ways, and policy makers must receive these predictions and use them to develop strategies that mitigate the potential negative consequences of water shortages.
This study is designed to link the National Weather Service (NWS) and university scientists’ models and projections of drought-significant trends and climate predictions with economic, social, and policy scientists’ evaluations of possible impacts and appropriate mitigating policy strategies, and provide information that can be used to enhance effective communication between NWS and its clients.
A research team led by the Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy and including physical scientists, economists, and policy scientists will conduct the research. The project will aggregate and synthesize extant scientific information on climate-induced drought in Texas and New Mexico, conduct targeted research on climate trends, investigate the potential roles of soot and aerosols in the drought/trend process, examine the economics of water management and allocation regimes in times of scarcity, and relate all of these findings to the decisions and decision processes of stakeholders, the public, and policy makers.
This interdisciplinary research project will illustrate how scientific information on an important problem, climate-induced drought, can be utilized by decision makers, water managers, and the public to identify potential problem areas and evaluate policy options. The results of this study will help NWS better communicate its forecasts and other data and reports to relevant stakeholders, the public, and policy makers.
The research team is led by principal investigator and ISTPP director and professor in the Bush School, Dr. Arnold Vedlitz, and two co-principal investigators, and Dr. Eric Lindquist (ISTPP associate research scientist/political science). Also on the project are Drs. B. Dan Wood, professor, Department of Political Science, and Sammy Zahran, ISTPP post-doctoral research scientist. Other research team members from the Institute include Meg Patterson Rogers, Nell Frazer Lindquist, Brenda Chaloupka, and Doris Newton.
