Agriculture/Forest Fire Management Presentations Summary

1. Agriculture/Forest Fire Management Presentations Summary Determine climate and weather extremes that are crucial in resource management and policy making Tmin (high or low) Tmax (unusual daytime high) Heat stress (high T & RH combination) High winds Excessive Precipitation Drought, moisture deficit Early snow melt (correlated with large fires in West) Hail Lightening (ignition of fires) ENSO indicators of SST (for index insurance) Identify information gaps in real‐world applications Monthly means can miss important event impacts Timing and duration of extreme events is important Near surface T (hourly) Near surface relative humidity (hourly) Excessive precipitation (daily, if not 6-hourly) Near surface winds Space resolution comparable to growing area (for agriculture) Space resolution down to 30m (for fire managers) Farmers want probability distributions, not terciles Uncertainty estimation

2. Agriculture/Fire Management Panel Discussion Summary What are the prospects for models to provide information on hourly timescale at 5km space scale for agricultural applications? For agriculture, challenge is for models to provide variables near surface at suggested time/space scales, although 5km is smaller than needed for CA or IA. For fire management decisions using climate change estimates, don’t need hourly. Care about daily and seasonal. Monthly average temperatures are being produced. Some centers will provide many of the variables down to 100km and 3-hourly in some cases. Conduct simulations for events that are defining or limiting crops Downscaling T & P from GCM for West being done. Downscaling RH/moisture and winds, but don’t have historical data for validation. If using model output, desire biases be identified, variance issues addressed Include potential exceedance considerations. What are the impacts of land surface modifications? Historically changes in Midwest landscape have lower surface water moisture in eastern and increased surface moisture to the western region. Changing crop type would have enormous influence on climate/evapotrasporation What are the impacts of heat waves and droughts together? Extreme summer temperatures are correlated with soil moisture in Midwest. Drought may imply more heat waves in Midwest.

3. Agriculture/Fire Management Panel Discussion Summary (cont) Will farmers take risk in using extremes information or are they risk averse? Give assurance that if they take action there is reduced penalty Comment on the impact of Mexican government insuring only where a met station exists? Incomplete weather station information is a difficult problem for many countries, e.g., Mexico Financial institutional thinking is emerging ahead of weather station data commitment. Satellite imagery and new technology hold promise for progress in regions where stations are not maintained. What is the impact of the bark beetle and pests which can kill off large parts of the forest? Could provide benefit, as the beetles do not kill everything, leaving a patchy landscape, possibly providing a cap to foliage growth Lacking field data to determine regeneration rate; need surveys to understand regeneration