Climate change is increasing mean and extreme temperatures in the Southwestern United States, leading to a suite of changes affecting agricultural production. These include changes in water, soils, pathogens, weeds, and pests comprising the production environment. The aim of this synthesis is to describe the anticipated leading agricultural pressures and adaptive responses, many of which are near-term actions with longer-term consequences. In the semiarid Southwestern United States, climate change is expected to increase water scarcity. Surface water shortage is the leading reason for recent diminished crop yields in the Southwest. Drought and lack of water represent the leading regional weather-related cause of crop loss from 1989 to 2017. Thus, water scarcity has been and will continue to be a critical factor leading to regional crop vulnerability. Soils, pathogens, weeds, and insects are components of the agricultural production environment and are directly influenced by near-term weather and long-term climate conditions. Field crops, vegetable crops, and perennial crops have unique production requirements and diverse management options, many already used in farm management, to cope with production environment changes to build climate resilience. Farmers and ranchers continuously respond to changing conditions on a near-term basis. Long-term planning and novel adaptation measures implemented may now build nimble and responsive systems and communities able to cope with future conditions. While decision-support tools and resources are providing increasingly sophisticated approaches to cope with production in the 21st century, we strive to keep pace with the cascading barrage of inter-connected agricultural challenges.

Crop insurance loss data can illuminate variations in agricultural impacts from exposure to weather and climate-driven events, and can improve our understanding of agricultural vulnerabilities. Here we perform a retrospective analysis of weather and climate-driven reasons for crop loss (i.e. cause of loss) obtained from the Risk Management Agency of the United States Department of Agriculture. The federal crop insurance program has insured over $440 billion in liabilities representing farmers’ crops from 2001 to 2016. Specifically, we examine the top ten weather and climate-driven causes of loss from 2001 to 2016 across the nation comprising at least 83% of total indemnities (i.e. insurance payouts provided to farmers after crop loss events). First, we analyzed the relative fraction of indemnities by causes of loss, over different spatial and temporal resolutions. We found that drought and excess precipitation comprised the largest sources of crop loss across the nation. However, these causes varied strongly over space and time. We applied two additional normalization techniques to indemnities using (1) insurance premia and the gross domestic product implicit price deflator, and (2) liabilities to calculate the loss cost. We conducted trend analyses using the Mann–Kendall statistical test on loss cost over time. Differential trends and patterns in loss cost demonstrated the importance of spatio-temporal resolution in assessing causes of loss. The majority of monthly significant trends (p < 0.05) showed increasing loss cost (i.e. increasing indemnities or decreasing liabilities) in response to weather events. Finally, we briefly discuss an online portal (AgRisk Viewer) to make these data accessible at multiple spatial scales and sub-annual time steps to support both research and outreach efforts promoting adaptation and resilience in agricultural systems.

Co‐production practices are increasingly being adopted in research conducted for the purpose of societal impact. However, the ways in which co‐production is conducted can perpetuate long‐standing inequity and inequality. This study investigates which principles of co‐production design are perceived to advance more equitable processes and outcomes based on the experiences of participants in three projects funded by U.S. federal programs that support decision‐relevant climate science, along with others engaged in co‐production efforts. We found three distinct perspectives: (a) Ways of Knowing and Power; (b) Participants and Interactions; and (c) Science as Capacity Building. Each viewpoint differentially weights the salience of statements associated with five dimensions of co‐production practices: (a) outcomes; (b) power; (c) place‐based, community rights and respect; (d) audiences and participation; and (e) interactions. In the final stage of the study, we hosted a workshop of participants representing various roles in co‐production efforts to vet and discuss each perspective. We found that the perspectives remained distinct after each of the groups selected core statements that reflect their views. The degree of variation across the three perspectives suggests that co‐production processes would benefit from an initial discussion of, and decisions about, rules of engagement to ensure that participants view the process as equitable.

Drought is a prominent feature of Hawaiʻi’s climate. However, it has been over 30 years since the last comprehensive meteorological drought analysis, and recent drying trends have emphasized the need to better understand drought dynamics and multi-sector effects in Hawaiʻi. Here, we provide a comprehensive synthesis of past drought effects in Hawaiʻi that we integrate with geospatial analysis of drought characteristics using a newly developed 100-year (1920–2019) gridded Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) dataset. The synthesis examines past droughts classified into five categories: Meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, ecological, and socioeconomic drought. Results show that drought duration and magnitude have increased significantly, consistent with trends found in other Pacific Islands. We found that most droughts were associated with El Niño events, and the two worst droughts of the past century were multi-year events occurring in 1998–2002 and 2007–2014. The former event was most severe on the islands of O’ahu and Kaua’i while the latter event was most severe on Hawaiʻi Island. Within islands, we found different spatial patterns depending on leeward versus windward contrasts. Droughts have resulted in over $80 million in agricultural relief since 1996 and have increased wildfire risk, especially during El Niño years. In addition to providing the historical context needed to better understand future drought projections and to develop effective policies and management strategies to protect natural, cultural, hydrological, and agricultural resources, this work provides a framework for conducting drought analyses in other tropical island systems, especially those with a complex topography and strong climatic gradients.