Preparing Texans for climate change
By Jay Banner, Charles Jackson, Katherine Hayhoe, Gerald North and Liang Yang
Our atmosphere and climate are changing in unprecedented ways, due in part to human activity. Population is also expanding; Texas is home to four of the top 10 fastest-growing U.S. cities. The landscape is becoming increasingly urbanized. At the same time, our demand for water, land and other natural resources is increasing. All of these issues raise concerns about what our future may hold.
Projections of future climate can be made using computer models that take into account natural and human effects. The models predict a much drier Texas, particularly in the western half of the state, on par with or even exceeding 10- to 30-year “megadroughts” of past centuries. These changes carry potentially enormous implications for agriculture, wildlife, water, infrastructure, public health, businesses and energy use. Consequences include water shortages and growing competition between urban, rural and industrial users.
During the 1950s, Texas experienced a seven-year drought that was part of a dry spell that gripped the Great Plains and the American Southwest. Two hundred forty-four of 254 Texas counties were declared federal disaster areas.
During the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago, mineral deposits — forming from water dripping deep into Texas caves — typically grew 10 to 100 times faster than they do today, indicating that Texas was a much rainier region. In the more recent past, trees in Central and West Texas leave a record in their rings of multiple megadroughts since the 13th century. Scientists link the rainy ice ages and megadroughts of the past to cyclical shifts in Earth’s orbit and natural cycles such as El Nino.
Our ability to predict changes in Texas’ future climate will meet continuing challenges, and there will be uncertainty about how the state should plan for the changes. The likelihood of some effects is becoming clear, however, with improved scientific consensus. For example, projections are consistent that the American Southwest will likely become drier throughout this century, marking a transition to a new average climate for the western part of Texas similar to the drought of the 1950s. It is uncertain when the transition would occur; some projections suggest it is already under way.
We propose that Texas needs to take three key steps to address the risks associated with future change. First, assemble the best existing climate change information. Second, improve this information through further research. And lastly, determine how to use the best information to plan for the changes.
Currently, there is no coordinated effort in Texas to fill these needs. This contrasts with the global consortium constituting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, state-level efforts such as California’s Energy Commission and municipal efforts such as Chicago’s Climate Action Plan. To better understand the risks and how best to respond, we propose that Texas establish its own expert consortium of scientists, policymakers, resource managers, state agency representatives, educators and stakeholders.
A Texas climate consortium could conduct the following essential functions:
– Bring together leading experts and stakeholders to determine the top concerns about how climate change may affect Texas.
– Quantify uncertainties of future changes to determine how to best plan investments for adaptation and for research to reduce uncertainty.
– Prioritize areas for new research; for example, generation of high-resolution climate projections for regions within Texas.
– Summarize the latest scientific data for policymakers with quantification of uncertainties.
– Compare the costs of acting versus not acting.
As leaders work to build global climate change accord, and as other regions are enacting their own legislation, Texas needs to lead in determining what climate change will mean for Texans and what we should do about it. We are fortunate to have leading researchers, planners and policymakers in our state’s institutions, agencies and businesses, and we should bring these resources together to help address this important challenge.
Jay Banner and Liang Yang are professors and Charles Jackson is a research scientist in the Jackson School of Geosciences, and Banner is director of the Environmental Science Institute, the University of Texas at Austin. Katharine Hayhoe is a research associate professor in the department of geosciences, Texas Tech University. Gerald North is a professor in the department of atmospheric sciences, Texas A&M University.
