Exposure of Rural Communities to Climate Variability and Change: Case Studies from Argentina, Colombia and Canada

SAUCHYN D; VELEZ UPEGUI J.J.; MASIOKAS M.; OCAMPO O.; CARA, L.

Implementing Climate Change Adaptation in Cities and Communities Integrating Strategies and Educational Approaches

Springer, Cham

Año: 2016; p. 1 - 405

This paper presents results from studies of exposure to climate changeand extreme events in the Mendoza River Basin in western Argentina, theChinchiná River basin in the Colombian Andes, and the Oldman River basin andSwift Current Creek watershed in the Canadian Prairies. These case studies are amajor component of an international research project: ?Vulnerability and Adapta-tion to Climate Extremes in the Americas? (VACEA). This project is very muchinterdisciplinary; with social and natural science providing context and direction forresearch in the other realm of scholarship, producing insights that very likely wouldnot arise from a more narrow disciplinary perspective. A large number of inter-views with local actors revealed that agricultural producers and local officialsrecognize their high degree of exposure and sensitivity to climate variability andextreme weather events, although they generally do not associate this with climatechange. Case studies of exposure demonstrate that the perceptions of the localactors are consistent with the nature of the regional hydroclimatic regimes. In allfour river basins, climate variability between years and decades masks any regionalexpression of global climate change. These modes of periodic variability dominatethe paleoclimate of past centuries and the recorded hydroclimate of recent decades.The exposure variables examined in this paper, indices of stream flow, snowpack,water excess and deficit, vary in coherence with the characteristic frequencies oflarge-scale ocean?atmosphere circulation patterns, specifically the ENSO andPDO. Projections of the future states of these variables require the use of climate models that are able to simulate the internal variability of the climate system and theteleconnections between ocean?atmosphere oscillations and regional hydroclimate