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La cuenca del río Conchos:
una mirada desde las ciencias ante el cambio climático
services, outreach to vulnerable communities, and sustainable
infrastructure projects to reduce urban heat.
Key words
: climate services, extreme heat, public health, climate
change risks.
Developing Climate Services to Address Climate
Changes in the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo Basin
There is a well-recognized need for comprehensive climate
services, to prepare for and respond to a variety of challenges posed
by climate variability and change (NRC, 2001; Miles
et al.,
2006;
NRC, 2010; Hewitt
et al.,
2012). Events of the last several decades,
such as the 1993 Midwest U.S. Floods, 1995 Chicago Heat Wave
(Changnon
et al.,
1996), 2003 European Heat Wave (Bhattacharya,
2003), Hurricane Katrina (Hultman, 2006), Hurricane Norbert
(Blake and Pasch, 2009), 2011 Southern Plains and NorthernMexico
Drought (Shafer
et al.,
, 2014), and Typhoon Haiyan (Levermann,
2014), have underscored the need for climate services. For the
purposes of this paper, we define climate services as the timely
identification, production, and delivery of useful data, information,
and knowledge, across multiple time scales, to inform decisions
for managing climate-related risk. Until recently, climate services
were provided
ad hoc
, through the combined, but only loosely
coordinated, efforts of national weather services, universities,
regional climate centers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
private consultants, state drought task forces, and independent
research centers. In 2009, World Climate Conference 3 brought
to light the recognition of the need for strategic, well-coordinated,
and formal national climate services (Hewitt
et al.,
, 2012; Brasseur
and Gallardo, 2016). The Global Framework for Climate Services
