Suppose you are a city planner, regional water manager, or wildlife conservation specialist who is asked to include the potential impacts of climate variability and change in your risk management and planning efforts. What climate information would you use? The choice is often regional or local climate projections downscaled from global climate models (GCMs; also known as general circulation models) to include detail at spatial and temporal scales that align with those of the decision problem. A few years ago this information was hard to come by. Now there is Web‐based access to a proliferation of high‐resolution climate projections derived with differing downscaling methods.

We investigated the moisture sources and tracks that enable summer rainfall over the four‐state southwestern U.S. region of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah by employing a high‐resolution Lagrangian particle tracking model. Six locations were selected—Cedar City (Utah), Grand Junction (Colorado), Eastonville (Colorado), Laveen (Arizona), Redrock (New Mexico), and Melrose (New Mexico)—together, they represent six spatial regions of summer precipitation for the Southwest. Moisture tracks were generated for all the rainy days at these stations for the historical period 1979–2013. Tracks were generated for a 3‐day period ending with the day of rainfall, which were then used to identify the source of moisture, pathway or trajectory, and the modulation along the track. The four major sources of moisture—Gulf of California, Gulf of Mexico (GoM), land, and the Pacific Ocean—were identified as responsible for summer rainfall over southwestern United States. The two dominant moisture sources at Laveen, Cedar City, Redrock, Grand Junction, and Eastonville were Gulf of California and land; at Melrose GoM and land were the dominant sources. The leading source of moisture at each location contributed to most of the extreme rainfall events. Tracks from GoM traveled the fastest and those from land sources were the slowest. Large‐scale circulation features–pressure, convergence, and specific humidity–were consistent with the moisture tracks and were found to be strong throughout the 3‐day period. This detailed and comprehensive generation of rainfall tracks offers unique insights into the moisture source and delivery for summer rainfall over southwestern United States.

This article presents ongoing efforts to understand interactions between the North American monsoon and society in order to develop applications for monsoon research in a highly complex, multicultural, and binational region. The North American monsoon is an annual precipitation regime that begins in early June in Mexico and progresses northward to the southwestern United States. The region includes stakeholders in large urban complexes, productive agricultural areas, and sparsely populated arid and semiarid ecosystems. The political, cultural, and socioeconomic divisions between the United States and Mexico create a broad range of sensitivities to climate variability as well as capacities to use forecasts and other information to cope with climate.This paper highlights methodologies to link climate science with society and to analyze opportunities for monsoon science to benefit society in four sectors: natural hazards management, agriculture, public health, and water management. A list of stakeholder needs and a calendar of decisions is synthesized to help scientists link user needs to potential forecasts and products. To ensure usability of forecasts and other research products, iterative scientist–stakeholder interactions, through integrated assessments, are recommended. These knowledge-exchange interactions can improve the capacity for stakeholders to use forecasts thoughtfully and inform the development of research, and for the research community to obtain feedback on climate-related products and receive insights to guide research direction. It is expected that integrated assessments can capitalize on the opportunities for monsoon science to inform decision making and, in the best instances, reduce regional climate vulnerabilities and enhance regional sustainability.

Unlike much of the contiguous United States, new hydropower development continues in the Far North, where climate models project precipitation will likely increase over the next century. Regional complexities in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, such as glacier recession and permafrost thaw, however, introduce uncertainties about the hydrologic responses to climate change that impact water resource management. This work reviews hydroclimate changes in the Far North and their impacts on hydropower; it provides a template for application of current techniques for prediction and estimating uncertainty, and it describes best practices for integrating science into management and decision-making. The growing number of studies on hydrologic impacts suggests that information resulting from climate change science has matured enough that it can and should be integrated into hydropower scoping, design, and management. Continuing to ignore the best available information in lieu of status quo planning is likely to prove costly to society in the long term.

Future reduction in mountain snowpack due to anthropogenic climate change poses a threat to many snow‐adapted species worldwide. Mountain topography exerts a strong control on snowpack not only due to elevation but also through the effect of slope and aspect on the surface energy balance. We develop high‐resolution projections of snowpack in order to provide improved, physically based estimates of the spatial distribution of future snowpack to inform species conservation efforts for the wolverine (Gulo gulo) in two study areas in the Rocky Mountains: one in Montana with known den sites and one in Colorado with recent wolverine activity and potential for reintroduction. Here we assess springtime snowpack loss in actual and potential denning areas under five future climate scenarios for the mid‐21st century. Snowpack in April and May is likely to persist into the mid‐21st century in the upper half of current denning elevations in all but the warmest future climate scenario, while large declines are projected for the lower half of the denning elevations. We gain new insight into the influence of topographical aspect on future snowpack and quantify the potential for enhanced snow persistence on north and east facing slopes under future scenarios that is only revealed in simulations where terrain slopes are resolved.