Yesterday the White House released the long-awaited third National Climate Assessment (NCA), a 43-chapter report that was developed over a four-year period by more than 300 experts, under the direction of the 60-member NCA Development Advisory Committee.
AMWA attended the White House event highlighting the NCA release. In his remarks, White House Science Advisor Dr. John Holdren said that the “single bottom line” message from the report is that climate is not a distant threat; it is “affecting the American people now.” After listing a number of impacts and trends documented in the report, he also said the report’s good news story is about the cost-effective actions that can be taken now to reduce the damages of climate change.
The White House event also featured remarks by NOAA Administrator Dr. Kathryn Sullivan and John Podesta, Counselor to the President. Dr. Sullivan said it is important for organizations and groups including NOAA to work together to take the “information off the page” and into “policies, plans and practices that are adopted by this nation.” Mr. Podesta tied the NCA to the President’s Climate Action Plan goals of reducing CO2 emissions by 2020 to 17 percent below 2005 levels, and highlighted the fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks and soon-to-be finalized Carbon Pollution Standard for New Power Plants.
The report is available on a website designed with “mobile learning” in mind and is organized by key messages with supporting interactive graphics. Report chapters can be downloaded by clicking on the download link or explored by clicking on the four topical tabs, which include:
- Our changing climate: observed change, future change under two IPCC greenhouse gas scenarios, and documentation of several climate change indicators such as precipitation change and sea level rise.
- Sectors: water, energy, urban systems and infrastructure and ten others.
- Regions: climate impacts specific to eight regions of the U.S., including Alaska, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands and chapters on coasts and oceans.
- Response strategies: decision support, mitigation, adaptation, research needs and sustained assessment.
The decision support chapter provides examples of decision-making frameworks and processes and provides some case study examples of how these processes are being used. The chapter does not assess specific decision support tools. The adaptation chapter describes on a macro level the adaptation planning activities taking place around the country but notes that adaptation is in a nascent stage, with actions only recently being initiated. The sustained assessment chapter describes the vision for a new approach to the NCA that will enable continual lines of communication of new knowledge and information to decision makers. According to the report, a sustained assessment process will increase the capacity of the U.S. to adapt to climate change while measuring and evaluating impacts and responses to its effects.
AMWA will provide additional information about the NCA particularly relevant to water utilities later this month in the May Sustainability and Security Report.