National Climate Assessment: Understanding and Responding to Global Change

1. National Climate Assessment Third Report ProcessKatharine Jacobs, DirectorNational Climate AssessmentESIP FederationWashington, D.C.January 8. 2013

2. US Global Change Research Program • GCRA Mandate: • “To provide for development and coordination of a comprehensive and integrated United States Research Program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respondto human-induced and natural processes of global change.”

3. National Climate Assessment:GCRA (1990), Section 106 …not less frequently than every 4 years, the Council… shall prepare… an assessment which – • integrates, evaluates, and interprets the findings of the Program (USGCRP) and discusses the scientific uncertainties associated with such findings; • analyzes the effects of global change on the natural environment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, human health and welfare, human social systems, and biological diversity; and • analyzes current trends in global change, both human- induced and natural, and projects major trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years.

4. Previous National Climate Assessments Climate Change Impacts on the United States (2000) Climate Change Impacts in the United States (2009) http://nca2009.globalchange.gov/ Target date for next NCA: 2013

5. The “New” National Climate Assessment Goal • Enhance the ability of the United States to anticipate, mitigate, and adapt to changes in the global environment. Vision • Advance an inclusive, broad-based, and sustained processfor assessing and communicating scientific knowledge of the impacts, risks, and vulnerabilities associated with a changing global climate in support of decision-making across the United States.

6. Goals for the NCA • A sustained process for informing an integrated research program • New approaches to development and use of scenarios at multiple scales • Evaluation of the implications of alternative adaptation and mitigation options • Community building within regions and sectors that can lead to enhanced resilience

7. Outcomes of the NCA • Ongoing, relevant, highly credible analysis of scientific understanding of climate change impacts, risk, and vulnerability • Enhanced timely access to Assessment-related data from multiple sources useful for decision making • Systematic evaluation of progress towards reducing risk, vulnerability, and impacts • National indicators of change and the capacity to respond

8. Assessment Structure • OSTP • NCADAC Working Groups • Regions (SW, NE, etc.) • Sectors (water, energy, etc.) • Data Management • Science • Scenarios • Indicators • Etc. • US Global Change Research Program (Federal) • USGCRP Principals • Interagency National Climate Assessment (INCA) Task Force • Assessment Staff • Technical Support and Coordination units (e.g. NCDC) • National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee (NCADAC) • a.k.a. Federal Advisory Committee • Network of Partners and Stakeholders • Regional Networks • Professional Societies • Citizen Groups • NGOs 8

9. Outline for 2013 NCA Report • Introduction/Letter to the American People • Executive Summary: Report Findings • Introduction (approach to sustained scientific assessment, including scenarios, indicators, engagement, etc.) • The scientific basis for climate change • Sectors and sectoral cross-cuts • Regions and biogeographical cross-cuts • Decision support, mitigation and adaptation • Agenda for climate change science • The NCA sustained assessment process • Appendices • Commonly Asked Questions • Expanded Climate Science Info

10. Sectors • Water resources • Energy supply and use • Transportation • Agriculture • Forestry • Ecosystems and biodiversity • Human health

11. Northeast Southeast and Caribbean Midwest Great Plains Northwest Southwest Alaska and Arctic Hawaii and Pacific Islands Regions + Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and other minor outlying islands + Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands

12. Sectoral Cross-Cuts • Water, energy, and land use • Urban/infrastructure/ vulnerability • Impacts of climate change on tribal, indigenous, and native lands and resources • Land use and land cover change • Rural communities and development • Impacts on biogeochemical cycles

13. Biogeographical Cross-Cuts • Oceans and marine resources • Coastal zone, development, and ecosystems, e.g., • SF Bay Delta • Chesapeake Bay • Gulf Coast • Watersheds, e.g., • Great Lakes • Colorado River • Columbia River

14. NCA Progress • The FAC selected 240 authors from the public and private sectors and universities to write the 30 chapters of the 2013 report. • NCADAC workgroups initiated multiple kinds of engagement activities, website, communications and engagement plan, e-newsletters, workshops, Federal Register Notices, “Climate Conversations” and the first ever Request for Information from the public • Draft Third NCA Report expected to be released next week

15. Traceable accounts explain the process and evidence for key messages: • Document the process used to come to the conclusions in key messages; • Provide additional information to reviewers about the quality of the information used to support the 2013 NCA Report findings; • Allow transparency of the process and traceability to data and resources when the Report goes online.

16. Products and Outcomes • Delivery of the Third NCA Report via an e-book, 400 pages, and a 50 page printed synthesis document • A defensible, transparent, well-documented product • First stage of the Global Change Information System for USGCRP – electronic access to all findings and data • An information foundation for strong communications products and processes that are useful to a variety of audiences, including Congress, local regional and state decision-makers, etc.

17. Current Activities of the Sustained Assessment Process • Design of GCIS: Data stewardship, management and retrieval, tools and applications, communication • Communications and engagement: NCAnet; NCA Communications and Engagement Workgroup; ICE-t for NCA • Regional coordination: maintenance and building of regional and sectoral networks; efforts of the Adaptation Science IWG at USGCRP • Indicators: NCA Indicators Workgroup, multiple funded interagency activities; proposed NCADAC products • Scenarios: NCA scenarios workgroup; SBE Task Force; several proposed NCADAC products; available sea level rise, climate, and land use/land cover scenarios Jan 9th (scenarios.globalchange.gov). • Sustained Assessment: Sustained Assessment Special Report authors; INCA activities and products; proposed NCADAC products; development of rolling 5-year operations plans and evaluation metrics

18. Major focus on engagement and communicationsNCAnet: Partners in Assessment • A network of organizations that extend the NCA process and products • Building long-term capacity to conduct and use assessments • Cultivating partnerships with organizations that will participate in the sustained assessment process 60 organizations so far https://sites.google.com/a/usgcrp.gov/nca-net

19. Current Sustained Assessment Activities: Global Change Information System • A “one-stop-shop” web based source of authoritative, accessible, usable, and timelyinformation about climate and global change for use by scientists, decision makers, and the public • A friendly, accessible entry into global change information for non-scientists • Global, persistent, reusable identifiers for each item • Integrated data catalog provides interagency metrics, data mining, searching, etc. • Interagency relationships allow discovery of interdependencies and increase collaboration opportunities • Agency information mapped into a common, consistent model with a standard vocabulary • Concept tagging and linking improves search results for agency products

20. Providing Access to Useful & Usable Climate Science and information Current Sustained Assessment Activities: Global Change Information System

21. Current Sustained Assessment Activities: GCIS Status • GCIS Interagency Workgroup chaired by Anne Waple and Curt Tilmes involves 7 agencies • Curt is working full time on design of the GCIS • Support for web interface from NCO staff and contractor • Reflects much engagement with federal and other information systems and projects • Phase I will be deployed in fall, 2013 to host the NCA 2013 report and all of the data and references behind the key messages • Phase II will support the full suite of USGCRP activities and data

22. National Climate Assessment Indicators The goals for the NCA indicators are to: • Provide meaningful, authoritative climate-relevant measures about the status, rates, and trends of key physical, ecological, and societal variables and values; • Inform decisions on management, research, and education at regional to national scales; • Identify climate-related conditions and impacts to help develop effective mitigation and adaptation measures; and • Provide analytical tools by which user communities can derive their own indicators for particular purposes.

23. Indicators Framework

24. IndicatorsExamples Adaptation and Mitigation Responses

25. NCA Timeline for 2013

26. Draft Review • Draft of NCA released for review Jan 14, 2013 • Comments can be submitted by the public, agencies and individual agency employees at http://assessment.globalchange.gov • All comments will be responded to, both comments and responses will be publicly available when the final report is released • Although commenters must identify themselves in the online form, their identity will not be provided to the authors or review editors during the response period • Only comments submitted via the official online comment forms will be accepted

27. What will happen to the comments? • They will be sorted by chapter and provided to the authors • Authors and NCADAC will prepare responses • A summary of questions and responses will be prepared • Changes will be made to the draft document • Review editors will assess the adequacy of the responses • The National Academies will review the revised document and evaluate the adequacy of responses • A revised draft report will be prepared for review and approval by the NCADAC • The document will be submitted for US Government review, then will be considered for submittal to Congress as the government’s response to the GCRA requirements.

28. Sustained AssessmentFoundational and Special Topics • Foundational Topics (supportive of 2017 synthesis reports and beyond) • Scenario development • Integration with CMIP5 outputs • Land cover/use cover updates • Guidance on use of model data • Indicators • Sustained Assessment • Valuation • Special topics “experiments” (require more depth than is afforded by coverage within a synthesis report) • Food security • International context • Water and Drought • Arctic or Mississippi Watershed NCADAC Meeting, June 14-15, 2012