Chapter 1: Introduction

Climate Primer Motivation: Empathy Interviews

The purpose of this Climate Primer is to provide succinct guidance to the USGS for using climate and climate change information most effectively, focusing on the needs and priorities of the Water Mission Area (WMA). There is a vast amount of climate and climate-change data available and this Primer is meant to help navigate what can often be an overwhelming amount of information. To guide the development of the Primer, the NCAR team conducted hour-long interviews with 6 members of the WMA, which included research hydrologists and a data scientist/ecologist. The goal of the interviews was to learn how USGS scientists are using climate and climate-change information in the WMA, questions and struggles when using the information, and what type of support would be most useful to them regarding climate and climate-change information.

The following is a list of questions that were posed to the interviewees:

1. What is the main water concern you are working on (e.g., groundwater / surface-water interactions, salinity, ecological flows)? Why is it important? How does climate impact that component?

2. How do you and/or your organization view climate change (e.g. it’s important and we need to include it; we would like to include it but not sure of best approach or are resource-constrained; it is not one of our top concerns)?

3. Have you used climate and climate change information (observations, weather/climate forecasts, or climate change model simulations)? If so, how have you used them? What was your best/worst experience using climate and climate change information?

4. What time horizon do you plan for?

5. What are you most curious about/least understand/want to know more about concerning climate change in general, and with respect to climate change information being provided by the IPCC/CMIP/climate change modeling community?

6. Do you have enough background knowledge on climate science to be dangerous?

7. Any final thoughts/feedback on the primer and/or interview process that you would like to share?

The interviews resulted in rich discussions on the focus and goals of the USGS WMA along with where gaps in expertise exist and what kind of support would be most useful from the perspective of those interviewed. Below is a summary of areas where the USGS WMA focused their work and areas where this group could use more guidance for understanding and using climate and climate-change data.

Selection of water concerns USGS Water Mission Area is working on:

• Coordinating broad water-availability assessments - historical and future

  • Water supply, demand, and quality

  • Components of the water cycle (precipitation, evaporation, soil moisture, streamflow, surface water, groundwater)

• Water-budget components and connections with groundwater/surface-water interactions, dissolved solids, other water quality

• Land use and management impacts on water

• Past and future snow impacts

• Stream and lake temperatures, salinity, nitrates

• Frequency thresholds are exceeded

• Spatial and temporal covariability

Desired information from a climate primer:

• Basics of climate-change data

  • How to evaluate datasets

    • Which datasets are good for past (Chapter 3) vs. future analysis (Chapater 6)?

    • Are some datasets “better” than others and, if so, why? (Chapter 3 Key Takeaways) (Chapter 4 Key Takeaways)

  • Where to obtain datasets, scripts to help with downloading and converting datasets (Chapter 3.2.7 Further Resources)

  • Understanding downscaling (Chapter 6.2 Approaches to downscaling)

  • Uncertainties, biases, limitations (Chapter 7 Uncertainty)

    • How to characterize and quantify uncertainties (Chapter 7 Uncertainty)

    • Understand how biases impact results (Chapter 9: Walk-thru Recipes) (Chapter 6.2.4 Pre-and Post- Processing of Climate Models)

• Recommendations for good observational datasets (Chapter 3.2.7 Further Resources)

• Provide a “standardized approach” for using climate and climate-change information (Chapter 6: Place-Based Climate Projections)

  • How to go from observation to climate-change impacts (Chapter 9: Walk-thru Recipes)

  • What to do if there are data gaps (Chapter 3.2.5: Blending multiple sensors and data products)

• High-level overview to understand main issues

  • How to decipher what is “real” and what to trust in the literature

  • Glossary of terms (Glossary)

• Guidelines on how to present outputs in a reasonable way

• Understanding of attribution (what was from climate vs. other drivers) (Chapter 5.3 Detection and Attribution)

• How to combine multiple future projections of drivers, e.g., future land use with future climate