Projects
Selected projects
Colorado River Science Wiki (ongoing)
Co-developer and lead author/editor (with Julie Vano, Brad Udall, and Tanya Petach). The Wiki is a web-based clearinghouse for scientific and technical information relevant to the Colorado River Basin and the management of its water resources and related natural resources. This clearinghouse is intended to be useful to managers and other decision-makers, to researchers, to the media, and to the broader public. As of January 2024, the Wiki consisted of over 40 pages covering a breadth of topics, and a database of about 800 relevant research publications.
Climate Change in Colorado, 3rd edition (2024)
Coauthor (with Becky Bolinger, Russ Schumacher, and Peter Goble). This report, commissioned by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, updates the 2014 report of the same name by synthesizing the scientific literature, supplemented with new analyses, to summarize recent climate changes in Colorado, and projected future changes to Colorado’s overall climate, water resources, and weather and climate hazards. For this 3rd edition of the Climate Change in Colorado report, the report is available as both a PDF document and a set of extensively linked website, and a GitHub repository provides access to the data and workflows underlying the analyses in the report.
A User Guide to Climate Change Portals (2022)
Research Lead (with Julie Vano, Project Lead). This first-of-its-kind online guide to climate change information on the web was designed to help people and communities in the Rocky Mountain West effectively acquire and interpret climate information that is appropriate for their locality and needs. It steps users through the landscape of climate change information, including over a a dozen online portals (e.g., Climate Explorer, Climate Toolbox), national, regional, and state climate assessments, portals for historical climate information, and other guidance for climate adaptation and putting information into practice.
Selected projects (with Western Water Assessment)
Colorado River Basin Climate and Hydrology: State of the Science (2020)
Co-lead editor and author (with Liz Payton). This report describes the full breadth of the science and technical practice underlying shorter-term forecasts and longer-term planning scenarios for water management in the Colorado River Basin, including weather and climate observations and records, snow, streamflow, and other hydrology observations, hydrologic modeling, weather and climate forecasts, streamflow forecasts, paleoclimate, and climate projections. Intended to provide a foundation for the upcoming negotiations of revised Interim Guidelines for the basin, the report was sponsored by a consortium of federal, state, and local water agencies.
Considering Climate Change in the Estimation of Extreme Precipitation for Dam Safety (2018)
Co-author (with Kelly Mahoney and Mike Mueller). This report, published as Volume VI of the Colorado-New Mexico Regional Extreme Precipitation Study, summarizes the science connecting anthropogenic climate change with changes in extreme precipitation, with a focus on Colorado and New Mexico. It also recommends that dam safety officials proactively address the likely changes in future risks to dams, and lays out several approaches for incorporating the science into rulemaking regarding dam safety.
In 2019, the Colorado Dam Safety Office approved a new rule that adds an ‘atmospheric moisture factor’ of 7% to all values for the extreme precipitation scenarios used for dam safety purposes, to create an initial safety margin for ongoing and future climate-change impacts.
Climate Change in Colorado: A Synthesis to Support Water Resources Management (2014)
Lead author. This report, commissioned by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, summarizes the historical climate of Colorado, recent trends in climate, the state of climate modeling, and projected changes to Colorado’s climate and associated impacts to water resources. Findings from the report have been used in Colorado’s Water Plan (2014), the Colorado Climate Plan (2015), and the Colorado Hazard Mitigation Plan (2018), and have been cited in over 40 other state-level and local reports, and more than 50 scientific papers.
High-impact historical weather and climate events in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming
Co-creator (with Adam McCurdy and Bill Travis). This online searchable database provides basic information about 170 of the highest-impact climate-related events (floods, winter storms, tornadoes, hailstorms, droughts, high-wind events, cold waves, landslides, and wildfires) that occurred between the 1860s and the 2010s across the three states. This database was inspired by the recognition, after the September 2013 Colorado floods, that a very similar flood event in September 1938 had been largely forgotten and was absent from discussions and perceptions of Front Range flood risk.