Two Years Establishing the Virginia Climate Center: Successes, Challenges, and the Future of Climate Services in the Commonwealth of Virginia

Climate change in Virginia: Virginia faces a number of threats due to climate change. Its coastal zone, Chesapeake Bay, and tidal rivers are at risk due to sea level rise threatening coastal croplands, marine ecosystems, transportation infrastructure, and military preparedness at the many defense installations in the state. Virginia’s urban centers are already suffering the effects of prolonged, extreme heat, leading to increasing public health threats and elevated emergency response, while increasing extreme precipitation and severe weather are causing flash flooding that damages property and infrastructure, disrupts transportation, and interrupts electric power. Both extreme heat and flooding are exacerbated by the urban heat island effect. The rural areas of Virginia are threatened by flash flood in excessive precipitation events and prolonged drought that both impact agricultural productivity – extremes that are amplified in Virginia by global warming.

The Virginia Climate Center (VCC; https://www.vaclimate.gmu.edu/) was launched in late 2022 to enable the faculty and students of George Mason University (GMU) to engage with Virginia's municipal officials, businesses, and community leaders to co-develop information and tools to cope with the inevitable consequences of climate change and inform municipal decisions, enhance Virginia’s resiliency, and improve economic productivity. To realize its vision of a resilient, healthy, and sustainable Commonwealth, the VCC is building collaborative networks with Virginia stakeholders – especially low-wealth communities that are most vulnerable – to co-create essential data, innovative products, and invaluable services. VCC research helps identify, understand, and quantify risks and develop preventive and mitigation strategies, best practices, and solutions that safeguard lives and property, elevate the standard of living, and champion wise resource management.

Capabilities: The VCC assesses local government climate change-associated planning concerns, identifies corresponding Mason faculty experts, and develops supportive research responses. The Center has capabilities to develop climate change information products for dissemination via published reports, blog posts (Virginia Climate Voices: https://www.vaclimate.gmu.edu/blog), social media, and public lectures. The VCC assesses local, regional, and state climate change impacts including flooding, heat, and air quality (indoor/outdoor). The team downscales climate information to analyze climate-change impacts on community health, building stock, transportation and energy infrastructure, and public spaces (parking lots, playgrounds, schools, etc.). GIS mapping and analysis capabilities are used to assess impacts resulting from extreme weather events and feasibility of adaptation and mitigation solutions. VCC team members convene stakeholder working groups, participate in local government climate planning, and assess green infrastructure needs and anticipated benefits.

Successes: The VCC began its pilot phase, focused on northern Virginia, with support from a Congressionally-directed community project, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under sponsorship of the Honorable Gerry Connolly, U.S. Representative for Virginia’s 11^th district. The VCC has organized a large, interdisciplinary team spanning multiple colleges, departments, and research centers across GMU, including experts in climate dynamics, engineering, public health, communication, peace and conflict resolution, public policy, and business. The faculty contingent has grown from the 4 co-principal investigators (Ferreira, Kinter, Maibach, and Ortiz) to include the other 7 co-authors of this paper as well as 12 other VCC faculty fellows who engage with the VCC to serve as a hub fostering innovative collaborations. Nearly 20 students, both graduate and undergraduate, have worked on projects organized and supported by the VCC with broad institutional support from the Mason College of Science, Institute for a Sustainable Earth (ISE), and Provost’s office. The latter made a grant to VCC in mid-2023 from the university’s Strategic Investment Fund to enable the VCC to reach across the Commonwealth, targeting EPA Justice40 communities. Additionally, in early 2024, the VCC – in partnership with the ISE, the nonprofit Center for Climate Strategies, and the University of Kentucky – established a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation’s Accelerating Research Translation program to expand its efforts to better support the rapid, low-cost translation of the science that local governments, community-based organizations, and local businesses need to become climate-resilient and develop a climate-ready workforce skilled at putting science into practice to address climate challenges.

Challenges: Standing up a university-based center dedicated to climate change adaptation strategies has its challenges, including spanning Virginia's over 100,000 square kilometers, addressing the wide range of local capacities across 93 counties and 38 independent cities and towns and across departments in each jurisdiction, and covering the range of five different climatic zones within the state. The VCC currently has only short-term support, which represents a serious obstacle to achieving the large ambition of the Center. An important difficulty in providing services of this kind is the absence of a State Climatology Office in Virginia. Striking an organizational balance between supporting local communities’ adaptation activities and needs as a climate extension service and conducting original research has likewise proved challenging. That balance has begun to take the form of curriculum and program development with creative ways to integrate faculty, staff, and students from all levels into community projects.

The future of climate services in Virginia: Virginia is not immune to the impacts of global warming. Planning and preparing for these impacts requires a comprehensive analysis at the municipal scale of threats to economic stability and growth, public health, security, and community well-being. Virginia must develop both statewide solutions and bespoke county-scale remedies that account for local climate and climate change conditions, economic resources and vulnerabilities, community values, and adaptive capacity. The need for climate services at the municipal level in Virginia – and likely in every state in the nation – is even clearer now than when we proposed the pilot project. The challenges of developing and delivering those services without a dedicated funding stream is also clearer now. How to overcome the challenges and meet the need remains an unanswered question.