Access a range of climate-related reports issued by government agencies and scientific organizations. Browse the reports listed below, or filter by scope, content, or focus in the boxes above. To expand your results, click the Clear Filters link.
This Drought Guide, developed through the interagency National Drought Resilience Partnership, can be used to anticipate and prepare for the consequences of drought on infrastructure services. This resource directs users to the National Integrated Drought Information System (drought.gov) and other agencies’ information and decision tools.
The Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report assesses the impacts of climate change, looking at ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities at global and regional levels. It also reviews vulnerabilities and the capacities and limits of the natural world and human societies to adapt to climate change.
Climate change affects all Americans—regardless of socioeconomic status—and many impacts are projected to worsen. But individuals will not equally experience these changes. This report improves our understanding of the degree to which four socially vulnerable populations—defined based on income, educational attainment, race and ethnicity, and age—may be more exposed to the highest impacts of climate change. Understanding the comparative risks to vulnerable populations is critical for developing effective and equitable strategies for responding to climate change.
Executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, requires that each Federal agency develop a Climate Action Plan for Adaptation and Resilience. This plan highlights the important role the Department of Commerce plays in advancing climate adaptation and resilience. The actions captured in this Plan, as well as the broader work of the Department to address the climate crisis, support the Department’s mission to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity.
Sections in this report include:
- Why Is Climate Adaptation & Resilience Planning Important for the Department of Commerce?
- Efforts to Enhance Climate Literacy into the Management Workforce
- Climate Vulnerability Assessment
- Actions to Enhance Climate Adaptation and Resilience with Climate-Ready Sites and Facilities
- Actions to Enhance Climate Adaptation and Resilience with Climate-Ready Products and Services
- Priority Climate Adaptation and Resilience Actions
A Coastal Resilience Center research team, led by Dr. Cassandra R. Davis of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has released a report that explores the disproportionate impacts of federal mitigation assistance on socially marginalized groups and under-resourced neighborhoods. The purpose of the report is to improve mitigation efforts by addressing equity in emergency management, ultimately supporting the creation of national policy for federal agencies including FEMA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and others.
This Guide is written for practitioners already using or wanting to use future climate information in their work, but who are not familiar with the underlying assumptions and choices surrounding climate data. Here, we introduce the climate model scenarios that are used to “drive” climate models forward in time. These scenarios are a combination of socioeconomic and climate forcing pathways. We summarize differences between these scenarios for the Great Lakes region to show users how their choice of model scenario affects future temperature and precipitation projections.
This report's subtitle is Managing the Uncertainty of Future Sea Level Change and Extreme Water Levels for Department of Defence Coastal Sites Worldwide.
From the Executive Summary: Global change, including climate change, poses unique challenges to the Department of Defense (DoD). In particular, coastal military sites, and their associated natural and built infrastructure, operations, and readiness capabilities, are vulnerable to the impacts of rising global sea level and local extreme water level (EWL) events. This report and its accompanying scenario database provide regionalized sea level and EWL scenarios for three future time horizons (2035, 2065, and 2100) for 1,774 DoD sites worldwide. The global nature of DoD’s presence required a broad and comprehensive approach that to this point has been lacking in similar efforts.
Hotter weather, stronger typhoons, coral reef death, and physical and mental health risks are among the major challenges detailed in this report on climate change in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Threatened resources include high-value coastal infrastructure and the millions of dollars that ocean ecosystems add to the CNMI economy annually. This report provides guidance for decision makers seeking to better understand the implications of climate variability and change for CNMI and its communities and identifies the additional information and research needed to support responses that enhance resilience and help CNMI to withstand the changes to come.
This report highlights the equity implications of sea level rise in the first nationwide assessment of risk to the country’s affordable housing supply. As climate change causes sea levels to rise, the number of affordable housing units at risk of coastal flooding is projected to more than triple to nearly 25,000 nationwide over the next 30 years.
This report is a scientific assessment of historical climate trends and potential future climate change in North Carolina under increased greenhouse gas concentrations. The report includes an overview of the physical science of climate change, detailed information on observed and projected changes in temperature and precipitation averages and extremes, hurricanes and other storms, sea level, and other relevant climate metrics. Findings are presented for both the state as a whole and for each of three regions in the state: the Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, and the Western Mountains. The report also includes chapters on sea level rise, trends involving interactions of multiple aspects of the climate system (including inland flooding, wildfire, forest ecosystem changes, urban heat island effects, and air pollution), and findings relevant to engineering design standards.
Planning for climate change resiliency is an increasingly pressing requirement for communities throughout the world and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) region. In order to help local officials, non-profits, and communities with this process, numerous planning tools have been developed by a wide range of public and private agencies. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to explain, organize, and prioritize the tools that currently exist in order to select ones that are broadly accessible to a wide range of organizations, applicable across a range of sectors, and not overly redundant. During this selection process, a list of over 60 tools was winnowed down to a final toolkit of 18 that are particularly useful at any stage in the resiliency planning process and can be used for communities throughout the DVRPC region.
While all people living in the United States are affected by climate change, some communities and some populations are more vulnerable to changing climate conditions than others. This final report from a NOAA-funded project in New Jersey highlights current evidence regarding impacts of changing climate-related coastal hazards on socially vulnerable populations, identify opportunities to address needs of socially vulnerable populations as part of coastal community climate resilience planning, and outlines possible options for coastal management policy that may enhance efforts to address needs of socially vulnerable populations as part of coastal community resilience efforts.
The Disaster Resilience Framework serves as a guide for analysis of federal actions to facilitate and promote resilience to natural disasters. This report identifies the rising number of natural disasters and increasing reliance on federal assistance as a significant source of federal fiscal exposure. Disaster resilience helps to reduce the impact of climate-related events on people and property. Recognizing the gravity of the effect of these disasters on the American people and the fiscal exposure it creates, the framework was made to help those who have responsibility for oversight and management of federal efforts to consider what they might do that will result in federal and non-federal decision makers taking action to increase disaster resilience throughout the nation.
The guidance provided by this report is designed to help all communities create disaster debris management plans. It assists communities in planning for natural disaster debris before disasters—such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, floods, wildfires, and winter storms—occur by providing useful, relevant information intended to increase community preparedness and resiliency. The report includes recommended components of a debris management plan, suggested management options for various natural disaster debris streams, a collection of case studies that highlights how several communities prepared for and managed debris generated by recent natural disasters, resources to consult in planning for natural disasters, and the EPA’s recommended pre-incident planning process to help prepare communities for effective disaster debris management.
The Beloved Community is a vision for our future where all people share equally in the wealth and bounty of the earth, where we protect its abundance, diversity, and beauty for future generations. In this vision of liberation, racism, exploitation, and domination are replaced by democracy, cooperation, interdependence, and love. To get there, we pursue transformative, systems-change solutions. What do we mean by this? The root causes of the problems our communities face—like climate change, racism, and economic inequality—are all deeply connected. Since the problems are connected, so are the solutions. The purpose of this toolkit is to put us on the path toward achieving this vision. Through the context of building equity and resilience into climate adaptation planning, we introduce strategies to transform our communities and, by extension, society. Our ultimate goal is to create lasting and systemic change. At the same time, we recognize the urgency of the issues our communities face and the need to take action now. That is why we pursue change at every scale—from policy changes to community-based projects—to institute the transformative change we need to uphold our vision of the beloved community.
This plan represents the efforts of the State of Minnesota in fulfilling the responsibility for hazard mitigation planning. The purpose of this plan is to identify the state’s major hazards, assess the vulnerability to those hazards, and take steps to reduce vulnerability using the technical and program resources of Minnesota agencies. The process has included consideration of current and expected future impacts from Minnesota’s already changing climate, as relevant to hazard mitigation planning. The plan identifies goals and recommends actions and initiatives for the state government to adapt to, reduce, and/or prevent injury and damage from hazardous events.
The goal of this concerted effort is to help Thurston County (Washington) and the broader South Puget Sound region prepare for and adjust to climate change. The Thurston Regional Planning Council crafted this document with a $250,000 National Estuary Program grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and significant in-kind support from the community. Partners included representatives from tribes, municipalities, universities, nonprofits, businesses, and other entities within the project area: three geographically diverse watersheds (Nisqually, Deschutes, and Kennedy-Goldsborough) within Thurston County that drain into Puget Sound. The watersheds encompass beaches, rivers, lakes, wetlands, highlands, forests, farms, ranches, cities, towns, and tribal reservations. It is the Council's hope that other communities throughout the Puget Sound region, state, and nation will replicate this project’s science-based assessments, innovative public-engagement efforts (including development of a resilience game), collaborative planning processes, economic analyses, and comprehensive actions.
This report provides the first state-wide assessment for Hawai'i documenting vulnerability to sea level rise. The report includes recommendations to reduce exposure and sensitivity to sea level rise and to increase capacity to adapt. It also provides recommendations based on emerging practices framed through extensive stakeholder consultations. It is considered a "living" report, and will be updated as further information is gathered. The framework of the report is intended to be used when facing other climate change threats affecting Hawai'i.
With support from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the Region Nine Development Commission created this plan to assess South Central Minnesota’s vulnerability to climate change and create strategies for the region to adapt to climate change. Region Nine, working in tandem with a Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, identified eight top priority sectors to prioritize the planning process: agriculture, water, human health, energy, transportation, forests, ecosystems, business, and economy. The result of the planning process was real, actionable strategies that can be used as a guide to initiate discussions and begin a planning process in Region Nine communities.
In the aftermath of Tropical Storms Irene and Sandy, the population centers of Greater New Haven and Bridgeport recognized significant exposure and vulnerability to their infrastructure, environment, and socioeconomic assets from extreme weather events and a changing climate. To counteract immediate and longer-term risks and broaden dialogue on community resilience building, the Southern Connecticut Regional Framework for Coastal Resilience project was launched. The overarching goal of this project was prioritizing actions and strengthening partnerships by providing proactive risk assessment, community engagement, conceptual design of on-the-ground projects, and this Final Report. The principal purpose of the project was to advance a Regional Resilience Framework—built on projects and partnerships—needed to help improve resilience for over 591,000 residents that represent over 30 percent of Connecticut’s coast. A core goal of this project was to strengthen the resilience of existing and future ecosystems, including a diverse suite of services and co-benefits, alongside existing and future development activities within a population center critical to the state of Connecticut’s future.
The protocol developed and used in this report is unique in that it is an asset-level assessment of the vulnerability of infrastructure to multiple coastal hazards and climate change factors (e.g., erosion, flooding, storm surge, sea-level rise, and historical flooding) over a 35-year planning horizon (2050). The protocol was applied to all buildings and roads in Cape Lookout National Seashore; the results are summarized in the report.
This guidebook results from the culmination of a year of dialogue among diverse stakeholders in southeastern Connecticut who defined challenges and solutions from extreme weather, climate change, and shifting social and economic conditions. Participants included representatives from nine municipalities, public and private utilities, public health departments, chambers of commerce, major employers, conservation organizations, academic institutions, community non-profits, and state agencies, among others. The dialogue captured six themed planning sectors (water, food, ecosystem services, transportation, energy, and regional economy) in a process that used surface and integrated solutions to address singular and multiple challenges across planning sectors. The guidebook provides a quick reference resource to help shape and inform actions that will advance a regional resilience framework for southeastern Connecticut; an accompanying Summary of Findings captures the project's final outcomes and conclusions, as well as providing a comprehensive account of the objectives, process, and details.
Climate Ready Boston is an ongoing initiative to help the people and city of Boston to plan for the future impacts of climate change and develop resilient solutions. Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh describes the challenge and the city's commitment in the report's introduction: "Climate change poses a greater threat to some Bostonians. The very young and very old, people who do not speak English, and those with low incomes or medical illnesses or disabilities are all at elevated risk. By ensuring that our solutions are built together with those communities and in response to their needs, climate action will help us build a more equitable city. Furthermore, because climate change knows no borders, we will work with neighboring municipalities to address the regional impacts we face together." The Climate Ready Boston website offers proposed solutions and information specific to a range of locales. It also offers a presentation and report on Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Projections for Boston.
This Web toolkit raises airport operator awareness about vulnerabilities caused by significant weather events. The toolkit helps airports develop more robust contingency and recovery plans, in addition to their airport emergency plans. The toolkit focuses on events that are “rare but plausible”; that is, events that may have happened in the distant past, or in adjacent geographic areas, but are not common event types at the airport itself, and therefore may not be in the forefront of the airport managers’ minds.
The State of Maine is experiencing shifts in atmospheric and oceanographic conditions that put it at the precipice of abrupt climate change. This report—part of the Department of Homeland Security's Regional Resiliency Assessment Program (RRAP)—focuses on the local and regional consequences of climate disruptions and their impacts on critical infrastructure in the Casco Bay region, the most developed and populous region in Maine. The report identifies vulnerabilities that may potentially affect the region’s ability to maintain its critical infrastructure systems and recover from the impacts of climate change.
In January 2015, Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia asked the Aquarium of the Pacific to take a lead in assessing the primary threats that climate change poses to Long Beach, to identify the most vulnerable neighborhoods and segments of the population, and to identify and provide a preliminary assessment of options to reduce those vulnerabilities. Over the course of 2015, the Aquarium hosted and participated in meetings and workshops with academic and government scientists, business and government leaders, local stakeholders, and Long Beach residents to discuss key issues facing our community as the result of climate change. This report, completed in December 2015, represents the culmination of these efforts. The report offers detailed assessments of the five main threats of climate change to Long Beach: drought, extreme heat, sea level rise and coastal flooding, deteriorating air quality, and public health and social vulnerability. It also provides an overview of what is currently being done to mitigate and adapt to these threats, and other options to consider. Finally, this report presents a series of steps and actions that city leaders and community stakeholders can use as a template for making Long Beach a model of a climate resilient city.
This handbook (USGS Professional Paper 1815) was designed as a guide to the science and simulation models for understanding the dynamics and impacts of sea level rise on coastal ecosystems. Coastal land managers, engineers, and scientists can benefit from this synthesis of tools and models that have been developed for projecting causes and consequences of sea level change on the landscape and seascape.
In support of the Eugene-Springfield Multi-Jurisdictional Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan, staff from the cities of Eugene and Springfield, Oregon, with support from the Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience, convened meetings in 2014 with representatives from the following sectors: drinking water, health care and public education, electricity, transportation, food, housing, communication, stormwater, wastewater, natural systems, and public safety. The team met for six hours with each sector and, working from a standard list of questions, collected information about the adaptive capacity and sensitivity to specific hazards. This report includes sector summaries resulting from these interviews that reflect the conversations and thinking of the participants.
Climate change adds uncertainty to already complex global water challenges. Though no standard method has been adopted yet by the World Bank, common practice uses downscaled precipitation and temperature projections from Global Climate Models (GCMs) as input to hydrologic models. While this has been useful in some applications, they often give too wide a dispersion of readings to provide useful guidance for site-specific water resources management and infrastructure planning and design. Rather than design for an uncertain situation selected a priori, the so-called “bottom-up” approaches explore the sensitivity of a chosen project to the effects of uncertainties caused by climate change. Supported by the Water Partnership Program, this book summarizes alternatives explored by a group of organizations that belong to the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA), to provide practitioners with the tools to adapt to the realities of climate change by following a decision-making process that incorporates bottom-up thinking.
This study investigates how climate change will impact the telecommunications and data center services sector. The report looks not only at the headline-grabbing impacts of extreme weather events, such as those incurred by Hurricane Sandy, but also the risks brought on by slow-onset, gradual changes to the base climate.
This plan—an update to the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy—augments previously identified strategies in light of advances in climate science and risk management options.
This plan evaluates the risks that different hazards pose to Berkeley and engages the community in dialogue to identify the most important steps that the city and its partners should pursue to reduce these risks. The plan updates the city's plan initially adopted in 2004. To develop the 2004 Disaster Mitigation Plan, the city conducted detailed research on four major natural and two major “man-made” hazards present in Berkeley: earthquake, wildland-urban interface fire, landslide, flood, hazardous materials release, and terrorism. Since that time, new maps and data depicting the extent and possible impacts from tsunami and climate change have become available. In 2011, the city added these hazards to the list and they are incorporated into this plan..
This report documents the effort to develop an understanding of possible impacts of climate change and potential future responses by the Towns of Acushnet and Fairhaven and the City of New Bedford, Massachusetts. It focuses specific attention on sea level rise, precipitation, and frequency or intensity of storms that may affect public infrastructure related to water quality and habitat protection.
The National Climate Assessment assesses the science of climate change and its impacts across the United States, now and throughout this century. It documents climate change-related impacts and responses for various sectors and regions, with the goal of better informing public and private decision making at all levels.
The assessment draws from a large body of scientific peer-reviewed research, technical input reports, and other publicly available sources; all sources meet the standards of the Information Quality Act. The report was extensively reviewed by the public and experts, including a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, the 13 federal agencies of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the Federal Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Sustainability.
As with the rest of the world and the Caribbean region in particular, the coastal and marine communities of the US Virgin Islands (USVI) are susceptible to the effects of climate change. Hazards include increasingly hazardous coastal conditions and loss of life-sustaining marine, coastal, and island resources. Climate change is anticipated to add to the stresses of the coastal environment by altering temperature and precipitation patterns, increasing the likelihood of extreme precipitation events, and accelerating rates of sea level rise.
Responding and adapting to such changes requires an understanding of the risks; weighing options for adapting to changing conditions; and instituting a suite of strategies to implement, measure, and fund response actions having the most benefits to the ecosystems and communities that depend on those services. With support from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Coral Reef Conservation Program, The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) Caribbean Program directed a project with the objective of developing decision-support tools and conservation strategies that will advance the implementation of ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) to climate change within the USVI.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II's contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) relates to climate impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. A Summary for Policymakers and the underlying scientific and technical assessment are also available.
