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Victoria Keener

As the impacts and risks from climate change increase, the climate assessment landscape has expanded in scope and application, resulting in the desire for more information relevant to local decision-making. Some regions lack detailed climate projections and a body of consensus findings about sector-specific impacts, and there is a need for actionable, culturally cognizant, translated climate information suitable for integration into operations and management, budgeting, funding proposals, and domestic and international policy. The Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment, or PIRCA, is the subject of this decade-long case study illustrating the need, development, and benefit of creating and sustaining a nuanced,...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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Scaling up the Hawai‘i Drought Knowledge Exchange: Expanding Stakeholder Reach and Capacity to Address Climate Change, Variability, and Drought
The Hawai‘i Drought Knowledge Exchange project has been successfully piloting three sets of formal collaborative knowledge exchanges between researchers and managers to co-produce customized, site specific drought data products to meet the needs of their partners. Through these pilots, knowledge co-production has demonstrated how active collaboration between researchers and managers in the design and production of data products can lead to more useful and accessible applications for drought planning and management. Resource managers have strongly embraced the need for better and more timely information on climate change, variability and drought, as these stressors exert a large and costly impact on resources...
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Understanding the Effect of Climate Change on the Migration of Marshallese Islanders
As one of the lowest-lying island nation-states in the world, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is acutely vulnerable to sea-level rise, flooding, and the associated intrusion of saltwater into crucial freshwater supplies. Persistent drought is further affecting agricultural production in the RMI. Many Marshallese communities are already experiencing these changes and are migrating to larger islands within the RMI and to other countries like the U.S. to, among other things, seek alternative means of making a living and access healthcare. The number of Marshallese residing in the U.S. has rapidly risen over the past two decades, from 7,000 in 2000 to 22,000 in 2010. There is also substantial internal migration,...
Chapter 27 of the Fourth National Climate Assessment describes changes already being felt in Hawai‘i and Pacific Islands, as well as what lies ahead. The top findings include: Dependable and safe water supplies are threatened by rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, sea level rise, and increased risk of extreme drought and flooding. Islands are already experiencing saltwater contamination due to sea level rise, which is expected to catastrophically impact food and water security, especially on low-lying atolls. Sea level rise has accelerated and is now damaging critical infrastructure such as transportation and housing, as well as beaches, ecosystems and cultural sites. In Hawai‘i, the value of all structures...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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Preliminary Investigation of Machine Learning Approaches to Improve Projections of Future Climate in Hawai‘i
Detailed, reliable projections of future changes in climate are needed by Hawai‘i’s resource managers, such as water utilities managers, land managers, conservation organizations, and decision makers. However, global climate models (or “general circulation models”), which are currently the most commonly used tool for projecting future climate variations, are known for representing large-scale climate patterns and are not ideal for simulating climate processes at small spatial scales, such as those relevant to Hawai’i’s climate. Traditionally, the technique of “downscaling” is used to bridge this gap between global climate models and local climate conditions. Due to the lack of downscaled datasets for Hawai’i, however,...
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