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 Sea Level Rise Technical Report provides the most up-to-date sea level rise projections available for all U.S. states and territories; decision-makers will look to it for information.
This multi-agency effort, representing the first update since 2017, offers projections out to the year 2150 and information to help communities assess potential changes in average tide heights and height-specific threshold frequencies as they strive to adapt to sea level rise.
This is the FY22 edition of the U.S. Gllobal Change Research Program's annual report to Congress mandated by the the Global Change Research Act. The report provides an overview of the Program’s progress in delivering on its strategic goals as well as a summary of agency expenditures under USGCRP’s budget crosscut.
This Environmental Protection Agency report discusses how climate change affects the timing and nature of seasonal events, summarizes changes that have been observed in the United States, and describes the implications of these changes. The main report discusses the science behind seasonal events and the ways in which climate change can influence seasonal trends. It uses many years of observations from EPA’s climate change indicators to explore the interconnectedness of seasonal changes. The technical appendix describes EPA's evaluation approach and criteria for selecting indicators, and it also provides documentation of sources and methods for the indicators featured in this report.
EPA prepared the report, From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste, to inform domestic policymakers, researchers, and the public about the environmental footprint of food loss and waste in the U.S. and the environmental benefits that can be achieved by reducing U.S. food loss and waste. It focuses primarily on five inputs to the U.S. cradle-to-consumer food supply chain -- agricultural land use, water use, application of pesticides and fertilizers, and energy use -- plus one environmental impact -- green house gas emissions.
This report provides estimates of the environmental footprint of current levels of food loss and waste to assist stakeholders in clearly communicating the significance; decision-making among competing environmental priorities; and designing tailored reduction strategies that maximize environmental benefits. The report also identifies key knowledge gaps where new research could improve our understanding of U.S. food loss and waste and help shape successful strategies to reduce its environmental impact.
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
This collection of leading practices in climate adaptation covers a suite of climate adaptation actions and is intended to broadly promote collaborative learning. Each practice in the collection is explained and supported by concrete examples. These practices are drawn from WUCA work products and WUCA members' experiences, and, when possible, connected to relevant resources and related efforts. Most of these practices are appropriate for water utilities of any size, as well as other sectors interested in climate adaptation.
The current practices and where they are placed within the five essential climate adaptation action areas:
- Engage
- Understand
- Plan
- Implement
- Sustain
It is important to note that these action areas and leading practices are not prioritized. Instead, the most useful practices depend on the individual organization's needs and priorities.
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.
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.
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.
This report is the first major product of the current Canadian national assessment, which launched in 2017 and intends to publish a series of authoritative reports between 2018 and 2021. This assessment focuses on answering the questions: how has Canada’s climate changed to date, why, and what changes are projected for the future? This initial report provides a climate science foundation for the other national assessment products. Its objectives are to assess current knowledge about how Canada’s climate is changing and why, and what changes are projected for the future, to help inform mitigation and adaptation decision making and to help raise public awareness and understanding of Canada’s changing climate. The CCCR is written for a broad range of professionals who are familiar with the topic of climate change but who may not have expertise in the physical sciences.
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 analysis examines what's at risk for U.S. coastal real estate from sea level rise. Millions of Americans living in coastal communities will face more frequent and disruptive high-tide flooding; as this flooding increases, it will reach a threshold where normal routines become impossible and coastal residents, communities, and businesses are forced to make difficult, often costly choices. For this analysis, that threshold is defined as flooding that occurs 26 times per year (on average, once every other week) or more, a level of disruption referred to as chronic inundation. The results identify the number of residential and commercial properties at risk of chronic inundation—and the total current property value, estimated population, and property tax base affected—for the entire coastline of the lower 48 states.
This guide contains five modules that provide best practices on conducting vulnerability assessments, collaboration among stakeholders, communicating drought preparedness and response strategies, and where to find (and how to use) data on drought. The guide also includes a list of valuable resources for public health professionals. The authors of the guide also developed and included two attractive, user-friendly handouts that can be easily customized and reproduced for community outreach.
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 guide provides basic assistance to electric utilities and other stakeholders in assessing vulnerabilities to climate change and extreme weather and in identifying an appropriate portfolio of resilience solutions. The guide is also part of a broader DOE effort to inform preparedness, resilience planning, and response initiatives.
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.
Climate change impacts ecosystems in many ways, from effects on species to phenology to wildfire dynamics. Assessing the potential vulnerability of ecosystems to future changes in climate is an important first step in prioritizing and planning for conservation. Although assessments of climate change vulnerability commonly are done for species, fewer have been done for ecosystems. To aid regional conservation planning efforts, this report assesses climate change vulnerability for ecosystems in the Southeastern United States and Caribbean.
This report provides guidance for evaluating how sea level rise and storm surge hazards may impact the ability to provide electricity service, and for identifying and implementing solutions to enhance resilience. The document includes examples of various tools, methods, and information resources that can assist in resiliency planning. In addition, climate resilience challenges and opportunities for different types of generation, transmission, and distribution assets are identified. It also includes general methods on how to estimate the costs and benefits of resilience measures.
A number of utilities across the country participating in the Department of Energy's Partnership for Energy Sector Climate Resilience have completed climate change vulnerability assessments. They used a variety of approaches to examine vulnerabilities affecting different categories of utility assets and operations, and the climate stressors of concern varied by region and by utility. This report details current practices, lessons learned, and needs identified by partners in conducting these assessments.
This assessment strengthens and expands our understanding of climate-related health impacts by providing a more definitive description of climate-related health burdens in the United States. It builds on the 2014 National Climate Assessment and reviews and synthesizes key contributions to the published literature. The findings represent an improvement in scientific confidence in the link between climate change and a broad range of threats to public health, while recognizing populations of concern and identifying emerging issues. The overall findings underscore the significance of the growing risk climate change poses to human health in the United States.
Coastal communities across the United States are facing worsening risks of flooding during routine high tides and damaging storm surges. With sea level rise accelerating along the East and Gulf Coasts, these problems are projected to intensify in the coming years, and they are likely to have a disproportionate impact on low-income and minority communities. This report is an attempt to guide improvements in policy making around disaster aid and preparedness, to ensure that communities receive the support they need before and in the aftermath of climate-related disasters. It also makes the case for better long-term planning and sufficient resources to anticipate and prioritize the needs of frontline communities who bear the brunt of the climate impacts our nation is experiencing.
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.
The Resilient Strategies Guide for Water Utilities provides options for drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater utilities to assist them in developing plans that contain strategies that address their specific needs and priorities.
The Guide outlines the resilience planning process and helps you to identify potential strategies and promote a better understanding of resilience strategies. At the end of the Guide, you can download a report containing all of your selections and submitted information.
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 summarizes the U.S. General Service Administration's approach, accomplishments, plans, actions, and coordination activities to evaluate the agency’s climate change risks and vulnerabilities to manage both the short and long-term effects of climate change on the agency’s mission and operations.
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.
Coastal areas are especially vulnerable to hazards, now and in the future, posed by waves and surges associated with sea level change and coastal storms. Coastal risk reduction can be achieved through a variety of approaches, including natural or nature-based features (e.g., wetlands and dunes), nonstructural interventions (e.g., policies, building codes, and emergency response such as early warning and evacuation plans), and structural interventions (e.g., seawalls and breakwaters). This report discusses the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' capabilities to help reduce risks to coastal areas and improve resilience to coastal hazards through an integrated planning approach.
The United States' 28 National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERR) are experiencing negative effects of human and climate-related stressors, according to this report. This is the first national-scale climate sensitivity analysis of estuaries to help coastal managers protect the health of estuaries.
This report examines current and potential future impacts of climate trends on the U.S. energy sector.
The Resilience Measurement Index (RMI) was formulated to capture the fundamental aspects of resilience for critical infrastructure with respect to all hazards. The RMI methodology supports decision making related to risk management, disaster response, and maintenance of business continuity. It complements other indices that have been developed―the Protective Measures Index and the Consequences Measurement Index―and thus, in combination with other tools, allows critical infrastructure to be compared in terms of resilience, vulnerability, consequences, and ultimately risk.
This Technical Input to the Third National Climate Assessment examines vulnerabilities of infrastructures and urban systems to extreme weather and other events associated with climate change.
This report, the final in a series from the National Academies, makes the case that the environmental, economic, and humanitarian risks posed by climate change indicate a pressing need for substantial action to limit the magnitude of climate change and to prepare for adapting to its impacts. The report advocates for an iterative risk management approach to climate change and using strong federal climate policies to support and enhance existing local, state, and private-sector efforts.
