Climate information use among southeast US water managers: beyond barriers and toward opportunities

Abstract

Despite nearly 20 years of work on understanding the climate information needs of stakeholders and simultaneous development of decision support tools, a relatively low level of awareness of specific climate information products exists among many water managers in the southeastern United States. This paper presents results from an assessment of key water management decisions, awareness of, perception of, use of, and barriers and opportunities for using climate information among water managers in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. Through an online survey, we collected data from 141 water managers across the region. Our findings reveal that water managers surveyed, for the most part, are unaware of most sources of seasonal climate forecasts as well as specific sources of long-term climate change information. From our analysis, we found that the use of seasonal climate forecast products remains mostly in the realm of water managers with high levels of expertise and training generally employed at large water management agencies. In addition to limited awareness, some reasons for nonuse are lack of understanding of forecasts and limitations in temporal and spatial scales of available climate information. We conclude with recommendations on how our findings can be used to align goals of climate science research by ensuring that it is relevant to decision-makers’ needs and decisions and by identifying opportunities for improvements in forecast dissemination and climate risk management. For example, the need for more interactions among scientists and decision-makers, and the identification of opportunities within the decision-making frameworks where climate information can be input are manifest throughout the study.