Changes in land use affect cloud formation and precipitation distribution. At the same time, climate change-related measures, such as cloud engineering technologies, are affecting countries’ water use strategies. These and other changes in the atmospheric water cycle were once hardly predictable, but now they are becoming a necessary component of modern water management on the planet.
Patrick Keyes, a professor at the University of Colorado, specializes in studying the impact of climate change on society. He has been researching this for a long time and found that there is a significant problem of understanding these changes, not only for the general public but also for the scientific community, particularly among water professionals. To better understand the impact of such processes on the world, he engaged scientists from around the world to create scenarios about possible futures that humanity could expect and that may not be well understood at the moment. The results of this research were published in the journal Global Sustainability as part of a creative journey to better understand atmospheric water processes and their potential economic and political challenges that may become relevant in the near future.
This work uses highly effective images created by art that interacts with traditional science fiction narratives as well as alternative forms of narrative, such as first-person daily entries. Patrick Keyes emphasized that this approach opens up a wide range of opportunities based on scientific research to build a common understanding of future activities and water management issues.
“Stories exist everywhere and are an integral part of human life,” he emphasized. “They convey much more than just the data in a scientific article. They allow you to explore how people can perceive or react to these changes. Such work gives people the freedom to choose and the opportunity to consider these changes regardless of their background or level of understanding“.
Patrick Keyes described the research process for this paper, revealing its constituent stages. Initially, he used computer text analysis to identify recurring themes in the abstracts of scientific journal articles related to the atmospheric water cycle. He then systematized this data, identifying clusters of recurring terms that reflect general principles of economic benefits. Its goal was to describe in more detail how people and organizations may interact with the atmospheric water cycle in the future, including the possibilities for actors such as countries or private companies to act to protect their own resources or take advantage of the benefits to ensure access to water as a key natural resource. Keyes wanted to explore these interactions and relationships in the third part of his work, which focused on science fiction.
Keyes, with more control over possible future water management linkages, invited experts to think about the world a few decades down the road, when actions such as cloud seeding become routine and their long-term effects become more apparent. This led to the organization of actions where experts wrote science fiction stories to explore reality and predict even the most unexpected possible outcomes.
“I think we have some idea of which future scenarios are more likely than others, but we need to realize that models alone cannot always describe all possible ways in which our world will develop“, he explained. “This is especially true for aspects that are difficult to quantify and influence practical consequences“.
Keyes organized a series of workshops for experts from various fields and professions specializing in water resources to create narratives. It used the concept of “future thinking” to stimulate the creative process, allowing participants to work together without discipline or topic restrictions. As a result, 10 scenarios were developed and added to the publication. Keyes also collaborated with the artist Fabio Comin to create illustrations.
Keyes is a member of the Department of Atmospheric Research at the Walter Scott College of Engineering. In his work, he has worked with several partners, including doctoral student Rekha Warrior from the Department of Public Aspects of Natural Resources at CSU. The other researchers were from the University of California, Davis, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Stockholm Resilience Center, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Keyes indicated that he is currently using similar strategies for his new project with the Colorado Water Center, adding that one of the main objectives of these projects is to encourage discussions about the water cycle at a time when this issue is becoming critical on a global scale.
“These scenarios can trigger interesting discussions about the policy and legal aspects – how all of this might play out in practice...,” he emphasized. “This approach can also help us to identify some new aspects that we might not have paid attention to, to understand them better.”
