Informing Future Climate Assessments by Understanding Data Gaps for Regions Outside of the Contiguous United States (OCONUS)

There is a lack of climate change information for regions outside of the contiguous United States (OCONUS) – including Alaska, Hawai’i, the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands, and the U.S. Caribbean– that limits the ability to fully cover the U.S. in the National Climate Assessment. This information gap also hinders communities’ ability to assess current trends and plausible future changes. In the last decade, several climate reports have pointed to specific data gaps in OCONUS areas related to arctic warming, sea level rise, extreme events, linking climate and health effects, and downscaled model datasets. The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), developed by the U.S. Global Change Research Program and scheduled for release in late 2023, built on previous efforts to close these coverage gaps and to further improve full geographic representation in the report. We will discuss the multi-step process guidance provided to NCA5 authors that offered ways to incorporate OCONUS information based on data availability. As a result of this guidance, we will demonstrate how NCA5 figures improved representation of OCONUS climate information while also highlighting geographic data needs.