He also says that the Southwest is a canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country. The impacts here will be swiftest.

“Climate change is here and now and this is what it looks like,” says Gregg Garfin, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona and one of the convening lead authors of the Southwest regional report. “It looks like all these impacts we’ve been seeing across the country, and if you isolate any individual region it might not seem like a whole lot, but when you put it all together, it’s really very stunning.”

BARK BEETLES AND WILDFIRES

One of the biggest concerns for northern Arizona is the one faced by its millions of acres of forests. Bark beetles and wildfires have already killed trees across 20 percent of Arizona and New Mexico between 1984 and 2008.

The forest provides jobs and economic impact, protects the diversity of species living within its boundaries, and offers large-scale infrastructure services by capturing water in extreme events.

Among those functions is the ability to hold carbon and keep it from going into the atmosphere. That ability will be diminished as climate change continues to advance.