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.
Heat is the number one weather-related killer in the United States. As average global temperatures continue to rise, the threats of both extreme heat events and chronic heat are projected to increase.
Heat disproportionately affects marginalized residents and those who face systematic inequities such as workplace safety, housing quality, energy affordability, transportation reliability, and healthcare access. But planning can shape heat risk. Planners will be key practitioners in helping their communities achieve greater heat resiliency by proactively managing and mitigating heat across the many systems and sectors it affects.
PAS Report 600 provides holistic guidance to help practitioners increase urban heat resilience equitably in the communities they serve. It provides an in-depth overview of the contributors to urban heat and equity implications, and it lays out an urban heat resilience framework and collection of strategies to help planners mitigate and manage heat across a variety of plans, policies, and actions.
The Fiscal Year 2022 edition of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP’) annual report to Congress, Our Changing Planet, presents recent Program accomplishments that illustrate how USGCRP is meeting its mandate under the GCRA and achieving the goals outlined in the Program’s 2012–2021 Strategic Plan and its 2017 update. Highlighted activities represent interagency collaborations undertaken in calendar year 2020 that rely on coordinated investments of two or more member agencies and contribute to implementing USGCRP’s strategic goals.
This report aims to build the capacity of organizations to serve as catalysts in supporting members of their communities stepping into leadership roles, as well as engaging them meaningfully in defining the scope of local climate change risks and impacts and formulating and implementing equitable solutions alongside key partners. This guide was developed using qualitative data collected through a series of interviews with experts from around the country who are designing, managing, and implementing community-based leadership development programs. Although not all of these programs directly address climate change and environmental justice, this collection of diverse programming illustrates the broad ways in which communities address leadership development and grassroots engagement in local decision making. This tool provides a comprehensive picture of training and capacity-building theory and practice, and showcases programs that are diverse in content, audience, geography, outcome, and practice.
This report provides step-by-step guidance and lessons learned on how to effectively engage with community members to understand climate impacts and to develop more equitable climate resilience strategies. Community-based organizations have repeatedly emphasized that to equitably and successfully carry out climate resilience solutions, it’s imperative to directly engage with community members to deeply understand how these threats directly impact them. Likewise, to formulate solutions that are equitable and truly work—and to get utilities and city officials to prioritize equitable investments in under-invested areas—organizations must directly engage with members of the community when identifying solutions. The toolkit provides real-world case studies, a project planning and facilitation guide, and extensive lists of references and resources.
The National Park Service and other federal land management agency partners offer Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD)—A Decision Framework for the 21st-century Natural Resource Manager. The report presents and explores a simple set of distinct management options that decision makers can consider when responding to ecosystems facing the potential for rapid, irreversible ecological change. In so doing, the report provides a framework that encourages natural resource managers to consider strategic, forward-looking actions, rather than structure management goals based on past conditions.
Each region of the United States experiences climate change and its impacts on health differently, due to the regions’ location-specific climate exposures and unique societal and demographic characteristics. This document describes the various health impacts climate change will have on different regions of the United States as outlined in the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), actions taken by the CDC Climate and Health Program’s health department partners to prepare for and respond to climate change in their communities, and relevant tools and resources.
NOAA’s Environmental Literacy Program (ELP) Community Resilience Education Theory of Change communicates the overarching philosophy guiding its grants program. ELP supports projects that both inspire and educate people to use Earth system science to increase ecosystem stewardship and resilience to extreme weather, climate change, and other environmental hazards.
A theory of change is broad in scope and begins with a problem statement and ends with a goal. In between, causal pathways systemically lay out the steps, or short-, mid-, and long-term outcomes that must be met to achieve the end goal.
This report provides national, regional, and local information to support effective decision making by U.S. agricultural producers, resource managers, and other agricultural system stakeholders. A set of 20 indicators identifies high-priority agricultural and climate data products while providing the basis for tracking climate change as it plays out across American working lands, toward devising adaptive operational responses.
The report was written as input to the sustained National Climate Assessment process to provide a discrete set of variables that describe linkages between climate trends and variability and U.S. agriculture in recent decades. An additional objective is that the indicators themselves (along with the frameworks for constructing location- and operation-specifc indicators) provide an information resource that can help information service programs, such as USDA’s Climate Hubs, evaluate operational risks posed by climate change in specifc production systems across the country.
A growing number of local governments are taking steps toward climate adaptation, mostly through the development of climate adaptation plans. However, the rate and pace of adaptation action has significantly lagged behind planning, especially in mid- and small-sized municipalities where resources are often limited and local politics may further delay action. This report describes how to use economics to build support for climate adaptation. Using case studies from cities large and small, it highlights how to effectively use economic data and methods, provides eight types of economic analyses for climate adaptation, and explains how to clearly communicate economic data to different audiences.
This report and the accompanying community spotlights provide an overview of climate change science, reasons why action is needed, how science supports decision making and planning, ways to adapt to climate change and limit the severity of its effects, and how such efforts can help build resiliency. The report illustrates the ways in which science can help individuals, communities, businesses, and government agencies make informed decisions. By working together to identify solutions and bring about positive change, we can reduce the risks faced by current and future generations.
Heatwaves are deadly and their impacts are on the rise globally due to climate change. People living in urban areas are amongst the hardest hit when a heatwave occurs because these are hotter than the surrounding countryside. It is crucial that cities incorporate heat-reduction tactics such as green spaces into their plans for growth or retrofit them in built areas; this emergency can only be avoided if city institutions, community groups, and planners contribute to reducing heat risk now and in the future. This guide is intended to help city staff take the first steps to understanding the heat risks they face, develop an early warning system, work with partners to consolidate heat action plans, and adapt urban planning practices.
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.
Flooding is the natural hazard with the greatest economic and social impact in the United States, and these impacts are becoming more severe over time. This report contributes to existing knowledge on urban flooding by examining real-world examples in specific metropolitan areas: Baltimore, Houston, Chicago, and Phoenix. The report identifies commonalities and variances among the case study metropolitan areas in terms of causes, adverse impacts, unexpected problems in recovery, or effective mitigation strategies, as well as key themes of urban flooding. It also relates, as appropriate, causes and actions of urban flooding to existing federal resources or policies.
The frequency and severity of disasters over the last few decades have presented unprecedented challenges for communities across the United States. This report summarizes the existing portfolio of relevant or related resilience measurement efforts and notes gaps and challenges associated with them. It describes how some communities build and measure resilience, and offers four key actions that communities could take to build and measure their resilience to address gaps identified in current community resilience measurement efforts. The report also provides recommendations to the Gulf Research Program to build and measure resilience in the Gulf of Mexico region.
This report offers the first national assessment of the scope and consequences of urban flooding in the United States. Researchers analyzed available data concerning urban flooding, surveyed municipal flood and stormwater managers, and met with professionals whose disciplines intersect with urban flooding at the local, state, and national level. The research team's findings affirm that urban flooding is a national and significant source of economic loss, social disruption, and housing inequality. This report presents the full results of the study, addresses governance issues that affect urban flood risk reduction, examines critical challenges, and offers recommendations for actions.
This guidebook was designed to support tribes’ efforts to proactively adapt to climate change and thrive for generations to come, building on the ongoing climate-related work in tribal communities. It provides a framework for climate change adaptation planning in the context of existing tribal priorities, and directly considers the unique issues facing indigenous communities. Specifically, the Guidebook directs readers to the foundation of existing resources and tribal adaptation efforts and identifies opportunities for braiding together traditional knowledges and western science in developing adaptation plans. The framework outlined in the guidebook will be useful for tribes in different phases of climate adaptation planning efforts, and supports learning from the experiences, approaches, and lessons of tribes working to become more resilient to climate change.
This report acknowledges that climate adaptation has begun to emerge as a field of practice, but states that the work is not evolving quickly or deliberately enough for communities to adequately prepare for the dangerous shocks and stresses that increasingly will be introduced by climate change. The report assesses the current state of the climate adaptation field, provides a vision of what a mature, effective field would look like, and recommends steps that should be taken to realize that vision.
This report (avialable here) describes a conceptual model of climate resilience, codified as an index. The Climate Resilience Screening Index (CRSI) is designed to be sensitive to changes in the natural environment, built environment, governance, and social structure and vulnerability or risk to climate events. CRSI has been used to develop an index score for climate resilience at the county level (scalable both upward and downward spatially). The index represents both the vulnerability of the entity to multiple climate events and the potential recoverability of these entities from climate events.
The approach uses five domains and 20 indicators related to the domains. CRSI characterizes holistic climate resilience throughout the US at the county level (2000-2015); ascertains the relationships among those domains and indicators; and, provide information regarding how that resilience score is constructed and the actions a community/county can take to improve their climate resilience.
The National Health Security Strategy of the United States calls on people and their communities to prepare for the threats to health that come with disasters and emergencies, to be ready to protect themselves, and to remain resilient in the face of such threats. The strategy defines resilience as “the sustained ability of communities to withstand, adapt to, and recover from adversity.” How can communities best incorporate resilience into their approaches and practices, especially in light of the potential consequences of climate change? This resource—prepared especially for community-based groups—provides information from the fields of psychology and other social sciences to help communities better understand and prepare for the adverse effects of climate change
Three years after Superstorm Sandy devastated parts of New York City, the housing stock in many urban coastal areas remains vulnerable to flooding. Much of the housing stock in these high-risk areas is out of compliance with federal flood-resistant design and construction standards.The report illustrates the significant design and financial hurdles of retrofitting multifamily housing common to many urban, coastal areas, describes existing policies and design approaches and their shortfalls, and provides recommendations for state and local practitioners to improve resilience of multi-family housing in their communities.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that regional economic prosperity is linked to an area’s ability to prevent, withstand, and quickly recover from major disruptions (i.e., "shocks") to its economic base. Many definitions of economic resilience limit its focus on the ability to quickly recover from a disruption. However, in the context of economic development, economic resilience becomes inclusive of three primary attributes: the ability to recover quickly from a shock, the ability to withstand a shock, and the ability to avoid the shock altogether. Establishing economic resilience in a local or regional economy requires the ability to anticipate risk, evaluate how that risk can impact key economic assets, and build a responsive capacity. Building economic resilience is highlighted in this guide from the U.S. Economic Development Administration. The guide is primarily intended to assist in efforts to develop the content of a CEDS document, suggesting how to develop the document’s format and substance to make the strongest, most useful, and most effective CEDS possible.
