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.
The State Climate Summaries provided here were initially produced to meet the demand for state-level climate information in the wake of the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment. This 2022 version provides new information and extends the historical climate record to 2020 for each state. The summaries cover assessment topics directly related to NOAA’s mission, specifically historical climate variations and trends, future climate model projections of climate conditions during the 21st century, and past and future conditions of sea level and coastal flooding. Additional background information and links are given below.
Find out how hometowns across the United States are building their resilience to climate change. Two women who studied climate change science and policy in graduate school took a three-month road trip to find out what climate change adaptation looks like in the United States. They visited more than 30 communities preparing for climate change and documented what they learned in blogs and through media reports. This report describes six big lessons from the ongoing adaptation work they saw across the country.
This report outlines 100 recommendations to help improve federal programs and their ability to prepare for climate change, drawing from a series of workshops with leading federal, state, and local officials and building upon lessons learned post-disaster in New Orleans (following Hurricane Katrina), New York (following Hurricane Sandy), and Vermont (after Hurricane Irene). The report identifies more than 30 federal programs, initiatives, and laws that can be used to prepare for extreme events such as storms, floods, and heat waves as well as rising seas. This report informed the White House's State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience.
Oxfam America, in their work to shed light on the vulnerability of the geography and people of the U.S. Southeast, commissioned two reports from the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina. The first one covers the entire 13-state region, while the second one contains much more detail about Louisiana and Mississippi. This document provides a brief overview of the findings, the concepts, and the methodology. The aim of these materials is to be useful tools to people in coastal communities, and to decision makers shaping policies in the region.
Historically, studies about climate hazards and social vulnerability have been conducted in separate silos. The Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) is the first study of its kind to examine both the potential impact of natural hazards and which populations are most likely to be negatively affected. This research, commissioned by Oxfam America, includes a series of layered maps that depict social and climate change-related hazard vulnerability. The maps assist in identifying hotspots in the U.S. Southeast, which are at significant risk in the face of four particular climate change-related hazards: drought, flooding, hurricane force winds, and sea level rise. The specific region of focus is the 13-state region of the US Southeast: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Roughly 80 percent of all U.S. counties that experience persistent poverty (defined as a county in which at least 20 percent of the population experiences poverty for three decades or more) lie in this region.
As global temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and weather patterns change, the stewards of our nation's infrastructure are challenged to consider how these changes may affect the country's roads, airports, rail, transit systems, and ports. This study focuses on potential impacts of climate change on human infrastructure in the U.S. Gulf Coast region.
