Adaptation

By Anne Waple, Second Nature

IPCC reports progress on responding to climate change, but much more action needed to reduce risk

This week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the second in a three-part global climate assessment. The report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, was written by 309 Coordinating Lead Authors from 70 countries, an additional 436 contributing authors, and was reviewed by over 1700 experts. The report looks at the nature of changing climate risk and the opportunities to increase resilience in a changing climate.

The report is certainly the most comprehensive global report of its kind and represents the current state of consensus understanding on impacts and responses related to climate change. This report also sets the stage for the release of the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment, due to hit the streets in late April/early May. That assessment will take a closer look at climate changes, impacts, and responses at the scale of the U.S. (watch this space for more on that soon as well as an overview of several recent and upcoming reports and how to use them!).

by David Hales, President, Second Nature

As we move toward the release of the 2013 United States National Climate Assessment, various background resources used in the process are becoming available. I think this material is the richest, clearest, and best documented information available – and user friendly. I’ll post links to the Assessment when it becomes available. Feel free to share this reference material widely.

The link below will take you to and provide information about a suite of climate and other scenarios produced as input to the U.S. National Climate Assessment. There are documents, graphics, references to data sets, and other resources that have been prepared to depict a range of plausible future conditions against which risks, vulnerability, and opportunities can be assessed at regional and national scale.

In addition to providing input to the National Climate Assessment, these scenarios are designed to be useful to a variety of other users including researchers, technical report teams, and decision makers. Over the next several years, we expect to evolve the scenarios to keep them up to date and make them as user friendly as possible, in support of the ongoing assessment process.

http://scenarios.globalchange.gov/

Over the past year at Second Nature I've been coordinating the Higher Education Adaptation Committee” - a group of college and university administrators, climate scientists, sustainability professionals and educators exploring higher education’s role and responsibility in ensuring that society is prepared to weather the storms of climate change.

On Monday at the Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference at the University of Maryland, I co-facilitated a session on this topic with David Caruso, President of Antioch University New England (who serves on the Adaptation Committee).

It proved to be a timely event.  On the day of the session, temperatures in New Hampshire reached the 90s (in April!). It’s been a warm spring all over the northeastern US.  And it was a warm winter – not really a winter at all in many places. Here, the mild weather doesn’t feel all that bad.  But if you understand the implications of climate disruption, it’s pretty horrifying.

I won’t run through the usual list of climate impacts – but here are just a few of recent headlines: