SRB measures and Young towers for surface diffeomorphisms

We give geometric conditions that are necessary and sufficient for the existence of Sinai-Ruelle-Bowen (SRB) measures for $C^{1+\alpha}$ surface diffeomorphisms, thus proving a version of the Viana conjecture. As part of our argument we give an original method for constructing first return Young towers, proving that every hyperbolic measure, and in particular every SRB measure, can be lifted to such a tower. This method relies on a new general result on hyperbolic branches and shadowing for pseudo-orbits in nonuniformly hyperbolic sets which is of independent interest.