An Introduction to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II

The Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates the production of a quadrennial assessment that integrates, evaluates, and interprets the findings of the agencies of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The assessment is required to analyze the effects of global change on a number of specific sectors and topics, analyzes current trends in human-induced and natural processes of change, and projects major trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years. The Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) fulfills that mandate in two volumes. Volume I, the Climate Science Special Report (2017), assesses the state of science of climate change with a focus on the United States, and provides the foundation for NCA4 Vol. II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States.

The 29-chapter NCA4 Vol. II, scheduled for release in December 2018, is an authoritative assessment of the impacts of, risks from, and adaptation to climate change on 17 national-level topics and 10 regions of the U.S. It was written by roughly 350 Federal and non-Federal authors and underwent multiple rounds of technical and policy review, including a three-month public comment period and a concurrent review by an ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

This talk will illuminate NCA4 Vol. II-related topics such as the development and review processes, public engagement, the risk-based framework employed by authors, as well as tools and technical inputs that formed the scientific basis for the report. In addition, it will highlight a number of the high-level findings of the assessment and lay the groundwork for topically-focused talks that follow.