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Climate Services for Coping with Climate Change, Drought, and
Extreme Heat in the México-U.S. Border Region
Observations and monitoring
. The RGB Pilot observations
and monitoring activities are aimed at enhancing the early
detection, assessment, and reporting of climate extremes and
their impacts. Partners had independently done much work
prior to the NACSP agreement, including development of
multiple hydrometeorological monitoring networks (e.g., NOAA
Cooperative Observer Network, U.S. Climate Reference Network,
U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Resources Conservation
Service SNOTEL [Snow Telemetry], Comisión Nacional del Agua
[CONAGUA] GASIR [Automated Weather Station Network], and
others), and river forecasts, through respective national weather
services. Opportunities identified early in the partnership
included: clarifying technical descriptors of climate and drought
(e.g., defining “flash drought” and other phenomena using criteria
specific to the RGB); creating RGB-specific temperature and
precipitation monitoring products; assessing the availability
and quality of existing climate- and drought-specific products
in the RGB region; assessing the extent, quality, and capacity
of observational climate networks in the RGB; and identifying
gaps in coverage and quality control issues, in order to facilitate
improved bilateral data sharing. In particular, partners identified
an important opportunity to develop a consistent, unified, cross-
border precipitation data set, and they have made progress in
selecting high-quality weather stations, and conducting skill
assessment for gridded data products. The partners also identified
observation network gaps that might be filled by volunteer
observations, such as the Community Collaborative Rain Hail and
Snow Network (CoCoRaHS; Reges et al., 2016). Nevertheless, there
are still barriers to development of RGB-specific data products,
and platforms to house bilingual products, the most apparent of
which is a lack of capacity within national weather services to
make such products and services reliably operational.
