A New Training Partnership Focused on Climate Change Impact on Water Resources

In October 2012 UCAR's COMET® Program (www.comet.ucar.edu) and the Bureau of Reclamation entered into a new partnership to create and deliver education and training materials aimed at water practitioners, planners, water resource engineers, technical specialists and decision-makers. These training resources will offer an opportunity to learn new, useful scientific knowledge and approaches to planning for climate change. COMET is a worldwide leader in the creation of interactive distance learning training materials in the geosciences and has over 650 hours of material available to all via its MetEd website (www.meted.ucar.edu).

The Bureau initiated this new relationship with COMET as part of a multipronged approach to create materials that respond to a multiagency report from October 2011 entitled, “The National Action Plan, Priorities for Managing Freshwater Resources and a Changing Climate”. Action 21 in that report states: “Establish a core training program related to climate change science for local, Tribal, State, and Federal water resources mangers”. The scope of the content for these training activities is being guided by the Bureau publication “Addressing Climate Change in Long-Term Water Resources Planning and Management – User Needs for Improving Tools and Information”. The joint efforts to date have involved COMET staff working with experts the Bureau and other Climate Change and Water Working Group Agencies (CCAWWG) including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, Western Water Assessment, Denver Water, and more.

The initial pilot phase of the project will result in the creation of a broader curriculum outline united around the theme of assessing climate change impacts on natural resources, a 3-hour interactive distance learning module tentatively titled, “Preparing Hydro-climate Inputs for Climate Change in Water Resource Planning,”and several workshops that will extend from the module material and focus on specific methods for assessing surface hydrology and crop irrigation requirement impacts under climate change.

This presentation will demonstrate the first distance learning module created by this joint partnership and discuss the workshops and additional future efforts planned for 2013 and beyond. Simple online registration is required to access all training materials via the MetEd website. Additional distribution mechanisms are likely to be in place at the time of this meeting and will be highlighted as well.

The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Government. Additionally, this paper was funded in part by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research under the cooperative agreement award #NA11NWS4670004 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or any of its sub-agencies.