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.
Global sea level has been steadily rising for decades and is expected to continue. Scientists have very high confidence that global sea level will rise at least another 8 inches and as much as 6.6 feet by 2100, causing significant impacts in U.S. coastal regions. This report lays out the science and describes possible scenarios to help planners and policy leaders assess the risks.
This summary report provides historical and projected estimates of emissions of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases (GHGs) from anthropogenic sources. The report provides a consistent and comprehensive estimate of non-CO2 greenhouse gases for 92 individual countries and eight regions. The analysis provides information that can be used to understand national contributions of GHG emissions, historical progress on reductions, and mitigation opportunities. The projections represent a business-as-usual scenario that includes reductions from established sector-specific programs but not economy-wide programs or commitments.
This brochure shares some of the lessons learned from climate-ready estuary projects in New England from 2008 to 2012.
This guide is targeted towards program managers who work in climate change and health adaptation, and provides them with practical information and concrete guidance to mainstream gender throughout all four phases of the project cycle: identification, formulation and design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation.
This report is the product of collaboration between the World Health Organization and the World Meteorological Organization, and aims to provide sound scientific information on the connections between weather and climate and major health challenges.
In August 2011, NOAA, the EPA, and the state Sea Grant College Programs of Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Texas hosted a two-day roundtable meeting of national experts from the fields of smart growth, hazard mitigation, climate change adaptation, and coastal management. This report provides an overview of ideas shared during the roundtable. The information is intended to help practitioners consider opportunities for further research, product development and services, and integration of the fields.
This document was written for those tasked with the development, maintenance, and implementation of a state disaster recovery plan, and is intended to serve as an evaluative guidebook from which users can draw from widely accepted steps derived from planning processes and informative best practices adopted in other states. The guide can be used to assess where a state plan stacks up relative to emerging federal planning standards.
No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each.
One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience--the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States.
Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause
The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has developed this adaptation strategy, which is inclusive of an impact assessment for its infrastructure and operations. The purpose of the strategy is to provide a preliminary assessment of the climate change impacts to ODOT’s assets and systems operations, underline the need for a vulnerability and risk assessment, and identify current areas of adaptive capacity and potential long- and short-term actions to be taken by ODOT.
This document contains a framework for steps to protect Washington State’s natural resources and economy from the impacts of climate change and build the capacity to adapt to expected climate changes. It outlines how existing and new state policies and programs can improve so that Washington can respond to climate change. In addition, it contains recommendations on how to strengthen existing efforts and build partnerships to help local governments, private and public organizations, and individuals reduce their vulnerability to climate change.
Adaptive management is a means of facilitating decision making and helping to resolve the uncertainties that hinder effective management. This applications guide builds on the framework of the DOI Adaptive Management Technical Guide (Williams et al. 2007), presenting case studies to show how adaptive management can be used for both management and learning. Focus is on practical applications in the areas of importance to DOI managers—climate change, water, energy, and human impacts on the landscape.
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.
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 strategic plan for 2012–2017 uses a science-based approach to address climate change, sustainable fisheries and ecosystem health, land-sea interactions, and existing and emerging ocean uses. For each sector, an overarching goal is articulated along with key issues to be addressed by the California Ocean Protection Council. The plan identifies objectives for making progress toward each goal, as well as actions that the council anticipates undertaking over the plan's five-year time period.
The report introduces key health connections to climate change mitigation strategies, suggestions of where these fit into a Climate Action Plan, a process for forging partnerships between planning and health organizations, links to data that will help planners identify and reference the existing health status of their jurisdiction, and supporting resources.
The Washington State Department of Transportation prepared this report in fulfillment of a grant from the Federal Highway Administration to test its conceptual climate risk assessment model developed for transportation infrastructure. WSDOT applied the model using scenario planning in a series of statewide workshops, using local experts, to create a qualitative assessment of climate vulnerability on its assets in each region and mode across Washington.
Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. This Special Report explores the challenge of understanding and managing the risks of climate extremes to advance climate change adaptation. Some types of extreme weather and climate events have increased in frequency or magnitude, but populations and assets at risk have also increased, with consequences for disaster risk. Opportunities for managing risks of weather- and climate-related disasters exist or can be developed at any scale, local to international.
In November 2008, Governor Beshear of Kentucky issued a report that included a strategy to lessen carbon dioxide emissions and to reduce Kentucky’s carbon footprint. In 2010 the Kentucky Climate Action Plan Council (KCAPC) was established to assist in developing the Kentucky Climate Action Plan. The KCAPC was charged with producing a greenhouse gas emissions inventory and forecast, compiling a Climate Action Plan with recommended greenhouse gas reduction goals, and potential actions to assuage climate change and improve energy efficiency in various sectors. This document is the KCAPC's final report.
The San Francisco Bay Plan, originally adopted by the California Legislature in 1969, contains the policies that the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) uses to determine whether permit applications can be approved for projects within the Commission’s jurisdiction—consisting of the San Francisco Bay, salt ponds, managed wetlands, certain waterways, and land within 100 feet of the Bay. On October 6, 2011, the BCDC unanimously approved an amendment to the Plan to update the 22-year-old sea level rise findings and policies and more broadly address climate change adaptation.
This report was prepared for the New York State Department of Transportation to help them identify the vulnerabilities of the state’s transportation system, as well as opportunities to adapt the system and mainstream adaptation into the transportation decision-making process.
A plan published by the White House Climate Change Adaptation Taskforce to help freshwater resource managers assure adequate water supplies, safeguard water quality and aquatic ecosystems, and protect human life, health, and property.
The report provides a comprehensive overview of observed and predicted changes to Massachusetts’ climate and the anticipated impacts. It also describes potential adaptation strategies the state may take to prepare for climate change.
A report on climate change impacts and climate change action plans for marine ecosystems on California's north-central coast. It presents scientific observations and expectations to identify potential issues related to changing climate—with an emphasis on the most likely ecological impacts and the impacts that would be most severe if they occur.
In 2008, agricultural greenhouse gas sources accounted for about six percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. This report, known as the USDA GHG Inventory, was developed to provide a comprehensive assessment of the contribution of U.S. agriculture and forestry to greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration, providing an in-depth look at greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration at the state and regional scales.
This report—written primarily for the EPA and other federal agencies, organizations, and researchers with interests in public health; the environment; building design, construction, and operation; and climate issues—addresses the impacts that climate change may have on the indoor environment and resulting health effects, finding that steps taken to mitigate climate change may cause or exacerbate harmful indoor environmental conditions. The report discusses the role the EPA should take in informing the public, health professionals, and those in the building industry about potential risks and what can be done to address them. The study also recommends that building codes account for climate change projections; that federal agencies join to develop or refine protocols and testing standards for evaluating emissions from materials, furnishings, and appliances used in buildings; and that building weatherization efforts include consideration of health effects.
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.
The Drought-Ready Communities pilot project culminated in summer 2010 with this guide to community drought preparedness, which communities throughout the U.S. can use the guide to understand and reduce their drought risk.The process outlined is broad-based, recognizing that drought creates problems that go beyond the scope of what water suppliers alone can address. With that in mind, the guide provides worksheets, planning tips, and case studies to help communities hone in on processes and solutions to drought.
This special report assesses the scientific literature on the potential role of renewable energy in the mitigation of climate change for policymakers, the private sector, academic researchers, and civil society. It covers six renewable energy sources—bioenergy, direct solar energy, geothermal energy, hydropower, ocean energy and wind energy—as well as their integration into present and future energy systems. It considers the environmental and social consequences associated with the deployment of these technologies, and presents strategies to overcome technical as well as non-technical obstacles to their application and diffusion.
The purpose of this guide—an addendum to regional socioeconomic monitoring guidelines produced by the Global Socioeconomic Monitoring Initiative for Coastal Management (SocMon) and its Pacific counterpart, SEM‐Pasifika—is to provide a minimum set of socioeconomic indicators related to climate change. The aim of these programs is to improve site management of coastal and marine areas by providing simple, user‐friendly guidelines on how to conduct a socioeconomic assessment, which helps coastal managers incorporate community views into adaptive management of marine resources.
This guide for conservationists and resource managers aims to help practitioners understand and assess the impact of climate change on species and ecosystems, including fisheries.
This plan identifies Ohio's mitigation strategy, which helps guide local mitigation planning and project efforts. The State of Ohio Standard Hazard Mitigation Plan was first approved by FEMA in 2005. This 2011 plan revision details Ohio’s highest priority hazards: river/stream flooding, tornadoes, winter storms, landslides, dam/levee failure, wildfire, coastal flooding, earthquakes, coastal erosion, drought, severe summer storms, invasive species, and land subsidence hazards. The plan also integrates and introduces the State Hazard Analysis, Resource and Planning Portal (SHARPP), a web-based system that captures and disseminates state and local hazard mitigation planning and project information.
The Florida Transportation Plan (FTP) is the statewide long-range transportation plan for all of Florida. It is complemented by this Strategic Intermodal System Policy Plan, which identifies policies for planning and implementing the statewide high-priority network of transportation facilities critical to Florida’s economic competitiveness.
A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems,” concludes this America’s Climate Choices report from the National Research Council. The report recommends that a single federal entity be given the authority and resources to coordinate a national research effort integrated across many disciplines to improve understanding and responses to climate change.
Meeting internationally discussed targets for limiting atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and associated increases in global average temperatures will require a major departure from business as usual in how the world uses and produces energy. This report from the America’s Climate Choices suite of studies by the National Research Council recommends that a U.S. policy goal be stated in terms of a budget for cumulative greenhouse gas emissions over the period 2012 to 2050.
In August 2009, New York’s Governor, David Paterson, signed Executive Order 24 establishing a statewide goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. In addition, his Executive Order named the Climate Action Council to determine how to meet the goal. The Climate Action Council was also ordered to develop a plan to increase New York’s resiliency to a rapidly changing climate. This document is the council's interim report on New York's progress toward these goals.
This report—known as the Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (or CPG) 101—is designed to help both novice and experienced planners navigate the planning process for emergency operations. Used in its entirety, the guide provides information and instruction on the fundamentals of planning and their application. A detailed planning checklist is provided.