Your Voice Matters: Incorporating Public Feedback into the Next National Climate Assessment

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a congressionally mandated report led by the U.S. Global Change Research Program that evaluates the current state of the science of global change and analyzes its effects on regions and sectors of the United States, with the goal of supporting decision-making across a range of sectors. The NCA chapter list has evolved over time, informed by user input and emerging topics. NCA5, which was released in late 2023, highlights advancements since NCA4 and reflects input on priority topics.

The development of NCA6 was initiated in early 2024, and like previous NCAs, it will cover national-level topics, regions, and response actions. However, changes to both the content and organization of the report’s table of contents were made to reflect current science and feedback from federal agencies, authors, and the public. For example, Social Systems will be now covered alongside Physical Systems as part of the science base section that provides context for and underlies the national-level topic, regional, and response chapters of the report. The response section will be moved to be earlier in the report and expanded from two to three chapters as demand has risen for more information on how people across the country are responding to climate change. Rural Communities and Urban/Suburban Communities will have standalone chapters to better reflect the experiences of people across the U.S. This poster will summarize content and organization updates to the table of contents and describe the rationale for those changes, including how evolving literature supports that decision-making. It will also highlight ways NCA6 will continue to incorporate public feedback and how the AMS Community can participate, including helping write, research, and provide feedback to authors as the report develops.