The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates the production of a quadrennial National Climate Assessment (NCA) that analyzes the effects of global change on a number of sectors, including ecosystems and biodiversity. Building on the success of the 2014 assessment, NCA4, anticipated for release in 2018, is being developed by nearly 300 Federal and non-Federal experts who will provide National-level overviews for adaptation, mitigation, and 15 sectors as well as in-depth analyses of the impacts of climate change on natural and human systems in 10 regions of the United States. Notable additions to NCA4 include chapters on Air Quality, International Effects, Sectoral Interdependencies and Compounding Stressors, Northern and Southern Great Plains, and the US Caribbean. NCA4 is a key component of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Sustained Assessment process, which aims to advance the science of global change and provide relevant, actionable information for decisionmakers. Robust public engagement helps to ensure that sustained assessment products are informed by, and therefore tailored to, more specific needs and decision points of our stakeholder communities.<br/><br/>A number of Sustained Assessment products - both traditional and novel - will inform NCA4. Traditional assessment products include the Climate Science Special Report, which will lay the scientific foundation for NCA4; the Climate Change and Human Health Assessment; the Climate Change, Global Food Security and the U.S. Food System report; and the 2nd State of the Carbon Cycle Report. Novel assessment products and tools include NOAA’s State Fact Sheets; the Climate Resilience Toolkit; the Climate Indicators effort; and downscaled projections and scenarios of sea level rise, land use, and population. Together, these products usher in a new era of informed decisionmaking grounded in state-of-the-art science and tailored to specific stakeholder needs.

4th National Climate Assessment and Beyond: Informing decisions across sectors and scales

254th National Meeting (2017)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.