Tucson Standard

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $3.5 million to University of Arizona researchers to study the impact of extreme weather in Arizona and look for possible solutions.

Their research will study the threat posed by extreme weather to Arizona's largest cities. The goal is to foster to the development of policy choices that could strengthen cities' resiliency to climate change, the university said in a release.

"The University of Arizona is a leader in studying the effects of climate change, particularly extreme heat, and we have long used that expertise to help Arizonans understand the challenges we face in a warming world," University President Robert C. Robbins said in the release.

UArizona is joining Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University for the development of a new Department of Energy project, the Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL), the release said. A total of $25 million was awarded to the three schools over five years for the laboratory, and $3.5 million of that will go to UA, the release added.

Ladd Keith, an assistant professor of planning and sustainable built environments at UA, will lead a team of researchers from the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health as part of the project. Since the Sun Corridor is one of the fastest-growing areas in the U.S., the region faces unique climate change-related challenges, Keith said.

"We're already hot and facing water scarcity – both made worse by climate change," he said. "This will be one of the most sophisticated attempts to understand complex urban climate systems from the atmosphere all the way to the ground, and then translate that into information and tools to help policymakers create a more resilient urban corridor in Arizona."

The Sun Corridor area to be studied is a section of the state that includes the areas of Prescott, Phoenix and Tucson, the release explained. SW-IFL also plans to research heat impact on areas of the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, as well as areas near the U.S.-Mexico border.

"This is an important part of our mission as Arizona's land-grant university, and I am proud that the U.S. Department of Energy has entrusted our researchers with a project that will shed more light on how our state can become more heat resilient," Robbins said.