Evaluating Knowledge to Support Climate Action: A Framework for Sustained Assessment. Report of an Independent Advisory Committee on Applied Climate Assessment

Abstract

As states, cities, tribes, and private interests cope with climate damages and seek to increase preparedness and resilience, they will need to navigate myriad choices and options available to them. Making these choices in ways that identify pathways for climate action that support their development objectives will require constructive public dialogue, community participation, and flexible and ongoing access to science- and experience-based knowledge. In 2016, a Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) was convened to recommend how to conduct a sustained National Climate Assessment (NCA) to increase the relevance and usability of assessments for informing action. The FAC was disbanded in 2017, but members and additional experts reconvened to complete the report that is presented here. A key recommendation is establishing a new nonfederal “climate assessment consortium” to increase the role of state/local/tribal government and civil society in assessments. The expanded process would 1) focus on applied problems faced by practitioners, 2) organize sustained partnerships for collaborative learning across similar projects and case studies to identify effective tested practices, and 3) assess and improve knowledge-based methods for project implementation. Specific recommendations include evaluating climate models and data using user-defined metrics; improving benefit–cost assessment and supporting decision-making under uncertainty; and accelerating application of tools and methods such as citizen science, artificial intelligence, indicators, and geospatial analysis. The recommendations are the result of broad consultation and present an ambitious agenda for federal agencies, state/local/tribal jurisdictions, universities and the research sector, professional associations, nongovernmental and community-based organizations, and private-sector firms.

National indicators of climate changes, impacts, and vulnerability

“…One of the goals of a national indicator system is to assess the effectiveness of adaptation actions to manage the risks of climate impacts (Kenney et al 2018;Moss et al 2019;Janetos 2020). Developing adaptation indicators is a combination of first identifying climate impact and vulnerability indicators expected to respond to specific types of adaptation actions and second developing counterfactuals to assess the relative effectiveness of these actions.…”

“…This article is part of a Special Issue on "National Indicators of Climate Changes, Impacts, and Vulnerability" edited by Anthony C. Janetos and Melissa A. Kenney public and private sectors and in the scientific community (Buizer et al 2013(Buizer et al , 2016Jacobs et al 2016). The participatory process and use-based framing of the NCA, including the establishment of indicators, was further expanded as a recommendation by the sustained NCA Federal Advisory Committee, which was disbanded in 2017 (Moss et al 2019).…”

Increasing the Usability of Climate Models through the Use of Consumer-Report-Style Resources for Decision-Making

“…Increasingly, practitioners express their desire for guidance about and curation of the evergrowing number of information options and decision-support tools (Moss et al 2019). To offer guidance and facilitate knowledge transfer, we propose an approach utilizing a climate model consumer report format developed in partnership with GLISA's Practitioner Working Group that aims to build the capacity of users to become better consumers through guided model-driven selection and to explain the rationale of the selection of the data and knowledge that are used.…”

Specialty Grand Challenge: Water and the Built Environment

“…A second area of research (see Moss et al, 2019) includes the development and adaptation of state-of-the-art and emerging tools and methods for water infrastructures. Advances in remote and in-situ sensor systems offer new ways for continuous monitoring and damage mitigation.…”