![]() "But they know what 'keeps them awake at night' about their jobs today, and they’re passionate about that. "People don’t always see the immediate connections between climate change and their jobs-especially when the timescale is perceived to be 30 years away and they have a five-year master plan," observed Russ Sands, Boulder's Sustainability and Outreach Supervisor at the time of the workshops. These concerns included extreme heat, increasing frequency and intensity of flooding, drought, wildfire, and increased variability in weather.Ĭity staff participants during a workshop in Boulder. Staff from several municipal departments-including emergency management, parks and open space, water, wastewater, local hospitals, and others-participated in the dialogues, resulting in a dynamic discussion about a wide range of climate- and weather-related concerns in the community. The NOAA project team analyzed local climate projections around the thresholds, and the group then selected an action they could take to build resilience. ![]() In these discussions, participants aimed to identify critical thresholds for when weather- and climate-related hazards pose significant risks to the community. With support from the project team, city staff piloted a participatory process in the form of two Shared Learning Dialogues. Identifying concerns and actions.and a need for institutional structures The project was funded by NOAA's Sectoral Applications Research Program. In light of recent experiences with extreme weather events and the associated heightened commitment to reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts, the city partnered with Adaptation International, ISET-International, and other organizations in a project to explore how community-defined thresholds for extreme events could be used to understand and prepare for future climate changes. The campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Regardless, promoting a conversation about climate resilience is a goal of the city and its municipal management. This portion of the city's population is transient, with residents moving in and out as they move through the university, which decreases the city’s ability to foster residents' understanding of local risks and preparedness. A transition to resilience building is complicated by the fact that Boulder can be described as a "college town:" a significant portion of its population is made up of students from the University of Colorado's flagship campus. While the city has frequently pursued progressive policies to address climate change, Colorado's state government generally has mixed views on the need for such measures: the state supports various climate assessments, but action is constrained by the legislature.īoulder's commitment to addressing climate change has typically emphasized mitigating the city’s carbon footprint, with less focus on adapting to climate change and building resilience. Located on the northwest edge of the greater Denver metropolitan area, it sits at the transition from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Plains, an area with fairly high uncertainty with respect to future conditions in climate projections. This type of extreme weather-as well as other recent events, such as wildfires-created an opportunity to plan for future climate change and build resilience in the city.īoulder is a medium-sized city with a population of about 100,000 residents. The event threatened homes, buildings, and the people of the community. Receiving more than eight inches of rain, Boulder experienced flooding that brought the Boulder Creek to a record crest of 7.78 feet-the highest level recorded since 1894. Extreme weather rocked the city that night, eventually sparking new conversations about climate change. ![]() It was was quite literally a dark and stormy night in Boulder, Colorado, on September 12, 2013. The red circle shows the jump in accumulated precipitation on September 13, 2013. Green fill indicates the observed year-to-date precipitation. The smooth dark line shows the long-term average for accumulated precipitation through the year. The graph shows observed precipitation at the Boulder station from the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily (GHCN-D) database.
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