The impacts of a warming climate are not only severe in the Southwest, but unequal in their dispersion across communities. That was one of several key points made by authors of the Southwest region chapter in the Fifth National Climate Assessment at the Four Corners Climate Summit on Saturday.

A keynote address from author and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams, delivered to a filled ballroom at Fort Lewis College, shifted the tone of the event from discussion of the scientific reality of climate change to a message of inspired action.

In a jab at the religious proclivities of politicians in Utah, Tempest Williams’ home state, she urged the room to tap into hope in the search for climate solutions.

“We have to find something more reliable than God,” she said.

In the morning, scientists discussed how communities on the front line of climate change – such as those with limited water resources or economies mantled on precarious, drought-affected agriculture – are feeling the impacts of the region’s historic drought already. And those communities will continue to feel the escalating severity of climate change and the trickle-down effects, experts say.

Unlike past droughts, the chronic lack of moisture in the Southwest over the last 24 years is being driven almost entirely by an increase in heat, rather than a reduction in rainfall, said Mark Brunson, a professor at Utah State University and expert in rangeland management.

“A very large proportion of the Navajo Nation does not have water in their homes,” he said. “Which means they are going somewhere else to truck water back. And as that water becomes scarcer they are at particular risk.”

Agricultural workers are also among the first impacted, not just because of shrinking crop yields, but also illness. Brunson nodded to a point made by his colleague, Jennifer Vanos, that Valley Fever, an illness caused by a fungus that lives in soil, is spreading across the Southwest as more and more farm land dries.

In Durango, observers can see the immediate proximity of elements of the drought cycle – a decreasing snowpack leads to aridification, which enables the transport of dust from dry fields onto the snowpack, causing it to shrink.

Water shortages “will make it more difficult to raise food and fiber in the Southwest,” Brunson said.

When precipitation does fall, it arrives with increasing strength and volatility, drought expert Caiti Steele said.

“We’re also seeing data across the Southwest which indicates a 17% increase in the amount of precipitation falling in the heaviest 1% of wet days,” she said. “So even though we might be seeing less precipitation coming into the Southwest, the precipitation that’s falling is falling in more intense events.”

In a series of whirlwind 10-minute presentations, the authors gave brief summaries of their respective fields of study, including wildfire, human health, drought and agriculture.

Per a congressional mandate, 14 federal agencies work on a four-year cycle to produce the nation’s definitive report on the impacts, risks and responses to climate change. The latest NCA was released in November 2023.

Authors are asked to toe a careful line: to be “policy-relevant, but policy-neutral.”

The concept is fraught, some scientists indicated, as they struggle to separate politics from their increasingly politicized field.

“I understand the policy-relevant but policy-neutral approach because it’s a report to Congress. And Congress has a broad spectrum,” Brunson said. “So, the extent to which this information can be used is heightened when … people perceive that this is not designed to work toward a particular solution.”

The chapter on the Southwest region encompasses the impacts of climate change in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Emile Elias, the director of the USDA Southwest Climate Hub, led the panel on Saturday morning.

Elias, who initially proposed the summit, noted that discussions of the NCA rarely occur in the rural communities. The latest NCA included, for the first time, a chapter on climate change-inspired art. Fittingly, the event ended with a presentation of the Center of Southwest Studies’ latest art exhibit titled “Coloradans and our Shared Environment in Times of Challenge and Change.”

It was Tempest Williams who bridged the divide between science and art. Her talk marked the event’s transition from facts describing the brutal reality of drought and climate change, to the artistic expression of the crisis.

“There is something deeper than hope: inspiring engagement, building community and having compassion for all life beyond our species,” she said.

rschafir@durangoherald.com