Scales of Climate in Designing with the Desert - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 59

and environmental applications. These applications include water resources, energy policy,
environmental planning, transportation and emissions, and ecosystem sustainability.
Projections of future climate at the global scale, the verification of climate models that
produce these projections, and the realm of policy-makers' responses to these important
findings can be gleaned from browsing many websites* and certainly by keeping abreast
of mainline scientific journals and magazines, if not simply the more popular literature
(e.g., Science , Nature , Scientific American , US News , and World Report ). Designers for the
future should access scenario data of global climate change from the IPCC4, 4 learn what
is forecast for our region, always understand the uncertainties, assume some level of user
risk, and plan accordingly.
Climate records on the global scale are sparse in many regions, and existing climate
models only resolve part of the complexity of the climate system (and at gross resolu-
tions of spatial scale; e.g., grid cells the size of Arizona). There is now a consensus that
anthropogenic factors play a major part of these trends, and that there are strong possibili-
ties for major changes over the next 50 years. 5 We must keep a watch for possible future
effects, even when planning at the local scale. News surveys are indicating that the public
is increasingly aware of these global changes. The ultimate challenge is how to find the
middle ground between under-using or over-using what we know imperfectly. 6 Climate
users who are not climatologists vary greatly in their understanding of how accurate cli-
mate records may be, and how they may be used to help solve problems. Many users of
information initially feel there is a weather site for every purpose and for every location.
Most clients do not know how to interpret or extrapolate data for different locales and situ-
ations. Part of the issue is what data are available. This problem is lessening. For example,
over the last decade in Arizona, there have been many special automated systems put in
place for specific purposes (Table 3.2). These data are useful for local/regional scale analy-
ses. To assess the long-time scales related to global change, we still have fewer sites that
are accurate and reliable from say 100 years ago than we do now. These are mostly sites
run by the federal government as part of their national system of weather data through the
auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Currently, at
the National Climatic Data Center, there are efforts at reassessing the entire observational

TABLE 3.2
Examples of Central Arizona Special Automated Networks

Network Purpose Elements Record Longevity

AZMET Agricultural Hourly temperature, humidity, wind, solar, soil

temperature, moisture, precipitation

>10 years

PRISMS Electricity 5 min temperature, humidity, storms, wind, solar,

pressure, precipitation

>10 years

MCFCD Floods Hourly temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind Several years

USGS Floods Precipitation, wind, temperature Many years

State Air quality Wind, temperature, air quality elements Many years

AZMET, Arizona Meteorological network, run by the University of Arizona; PRISMS, Phoenix Real-
time Instrumentation for Surface Meteorological Studies, maintained by Salt River Project, in
cooperation with ASU and National Weather Service; MCFCD, Maricopa County Flood Control
District; USGS United Stated Geological Survey.

* Examples of websites include http://www.epa.gov and http://www.noaa.gov (accessed July 15, 2009).