Use and Synthesis of the Third National Climate Assessment for the Great Lakes Region
Abstract
The Great Lakes region spans large sections of the Midwest and Northeast regions of the United States National Climate Assessment. The region is embedded in a complex system that includes interaction among the lakes, land use, and the atmosphere, which warrants careful consideration in the climate information used for adaptation planning, local research, and policy decisions. Boundary organizations working to increase the integration and use of climate knowledge for adaptation in the Great Lakes must be mindful of this complexity when using and communicating the National Climate Assessment to their stakeholder networks. One such organization is the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments (GLISA), one of eleven NOAA-supported regional teams dedicated to helping the nation prepare for and adapt to climate variability and change. To address this challenge, GLISA developed a Great Lakes Synthesis report for the Third National Climate Assessment, summarizing key impacts from the Northeast and Midwest chapters and bringing in other literature specific to the region. Additionally, GLISA acquired the dataset used to make many of the maps in the Assessment and with permission, recreated all of the maps for the Great Lakes region and individual states/provinces (e.g., average annual temperature, total annual precipitation, number of days per year over 90°F, changes in frost-free season length). The report and maps have been widely distributed in the Great Lakes and have been well received by scholars and practitioners in the region. The report and maps have worked well as introductory material to climate change in the Great Lakes region, and have served as a basis for GLISA to develop more refined, localized products requested by decision makers. This presentation will highlight GLISA's use of the Third National Climate Assessment to develop the Great Lakes Synthesis report and maps, as well as plans to produce a similar report for upcoming Fourth National Climate Assessment.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMPA52A..04J
- Keywords:
-
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1637 Regional climate change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCESDE: 6620 Science policy;
- PUBLIC ISSUES