November 1998

Subcommittee on Global Change Research
Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR).
National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).

Abstract

The interagency Subcommittee on Global Change Research, which coordinates implementation of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the Office of Science and Technology Policy began work on the first national assessment of the potential consequences of climate change for the U.S. in early 1997. The effort has included approximately twenty regional workshops; an intensive two-week summer study; a National Forum; extensive discussions among Federal Agencies, the scientific community, and a wide variety of stakeholders; and the establishment of an advisory committee named the National Assessment Synthesis Team (NAST), chartered through the National Science Foundation. This document is the National Assessment Plan developed by the NAST. It has been reviewed and approved by the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, and the National Science and Technology Council.

The purpose of the Plan is to describe the assessment process and to set out a timetable of activities. Key aspects include the goal and architecture of the assessment; management strategy; expected outputs; templates for national, regional, and sectoral analyses; the review process; and outreach activities.

Introduction

Climate variability and change now and in the future pose both challenges and opportunities for our Nation. To be better prepared, the United States has developed a national assessment process to analyze and evaluate what is known about the potential consequences of climate variability and change for the Nation, in the context of other pressures on the public, the environment, and the Nation's resources. Activities have been established to assess the risks and opportunities for the United States--its people, its environment, and its economy--associated with climate variability and climate change. The national assessment process will involve a broad spectrum of stakeholders from state, local, tribal, and Federal governments; business; labor; academia; non-profit organizations; and the general public. The assessment will link research by scientists to specific needs of the stakeholders; and will provide planners, managers, organizations, and the public with the information needed to increase resilience to climate variability and cope with climate change. It is founded on the principles of scientific excellence and openness, and will be integrative and iterative.

The assessment will take place under the auspices of the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which is mandated by statute with the responsibility to undertake scientific assessments of the potential consequences of global change for the United States. The "Global Change Research Act of 1990" (P.L. 101-606) states that the Federal government

"shall prepare and submit to the President and the Congress an assessment which--

1. integrates, evaluates, and interprets the findings of the Program and discusses the scientific uncertainties associated with such findings;

2. analyzes the effects of global change on the natural environment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, human health and welfare, human social systems, and biological diversity; and

3. analyzes current trends in global change, both human-inducted and natural, and projects major trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years."

During the past year, the interagency Subcommittee on Global Change Research (SGCR), which coordinates implementation of the USGCRP, in cooperation with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), has engaged in a comprehensive planning effort to implement the national assessment process. This effort has included regional workshops; an intensive two-week summer study; a National Forum; and extensive discussions among Federal agencies, the scientific community, and the stakeholder communities. The planning effort has led to the establishment of a Federally established advisory committee named the National Assessment Synthesis Team (NAST), chartered through the National Science Foundation, and the interagency National Assessment Working Group to work on behalf of the SGCR (SGCR/NAWG). This document is the plan that has been developed for the National Assessment by the NAST in close consultation with the SGCR/NAWG and has also been reviewed and approved by the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, the National Science and Technology Council, and the OSTP.

The purposes of the plan are to describe key aspects of the assessment process and to set out a timetable of activities. The key aspects include the goal and architecture of the assessment; management strategy; outputs; templates for national, regional, and sectoral analyses; the review process; the schedule; and outreach.

Goal and Architecture of the National Assessment Process

The overall goal of the National Assessment is to analyze and evaluate what is known about the potential consequences of climate variability and change for the Nation in the context of other pressures on the public, the environment, and the Nation's resources. Analysis and evaluation will be derived from the extant scientific literature and from new studies done specifically in support of the national assessment process. The national assessment process will be guided by a short list of questions such as the following:

• What are the current environmental stresses and issues for the United States that will form a backdrop for potential additional impacts of climate change?

• How might climate variability and change exacerbate or ameliorate existing problems?

• What are the priority research and information needs that can better prepare policy makers to reach wise decisions related to climate variability and change?

• What research is most important to complete over the short term? Over the long term?

• What coping options exist that can build resilience to current environmental stresses, and also possibly lessen the impacts of climate change?

The overall assessment effort will have three major components:

1. National synthesis. This will draw together the results of regional workshops and/or analyses and sectoral analyses of the potential consequences of climate variability and change. In addition, the synthesis effort will involve new analyses as are needed and feasible. It will be national in scope.

2. Sectoral analyses. These analyses will consider potential consequences of climate variability and change on major economic sectors such as agriculture, "environmental sectors" such as the coastal zone, and "societal sectors" such as human health. These analyses will be quantitative and national in scope.

3. Regional analyses. Regional workshops and analyses will identify and characterize potential consequences of climate variability and change for selected geographic regions. These analyses will be performed by teams comprised of experts from both public and private sectors and the spectrum of stakeholder communities.

The National Assessment will emphasize the potential consequences over the next 25-30 years, and also over the next 100 years. All regional, sectoral and synthesis analyses will use a common set of scenarios for climate change and changes in socio-economic conditions. The use of common scenarios across all analyses will facilitate synthesis. Analyses of potential consequences over the next 100 years will need to consider the potential for significant secular changes in climate, potentially accompanied by changes in climate variability and the frequency of extreme events, as well as the projected large changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Over this time frame, coping technologies and practices can also be expected to change, so some provision must be made in the analyses for these considerations. Analyses of potential consequences over the next 25-30 years will need to consider that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations will certainly continue to rise, and there may be modest, but observable, trends in climate. Potential consequences over both short and long time frames will need to consider the possibility of non-linear and threshold responses.

Management of the National Assessment Process

The parent body within the US Government for the National Assessment is the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR), which is a subsidiary body of the National Science and Technology Council, chaired by the President. The CENR has delegated responsibility for oversight of assessment activities to its Subcommittee on Global Change Research (SGCR), which is the parent committee for the USGCRP. The SGCR has broad responsibilities for research planning and coordination among the Federal agencies. With respect to the National Assessment, the SGCR has been charged with overall coordination, implementation, and sponsorship of the national assessment process. The letter from the White House to the chair of the SGCR assigning this responsibility is available here. The Terms of Reference developed by the SGCR for the NAST are available here.

Specific responsibilities have been defined for oversight of the three major components of the National Assessment and for coordination activities (see also charges to the various entities and other expanded statements of roles and responsibilities). The National Assessment is envisioned as a broad-based process that includes structured interaction with a range of regional and sectoral experts and stakeholders.

The NAST is to provide overall intellectual oversight of the national assessment process and has specific responsibility for the National Assessment Synthesis Report, for defining national scenarios, for providing advice and oversight of the sectoral analyses, and for recommending guidelines for the template for the regional analyses. The NAST, a FACA-chartered committee, is a public-private partnership: its members are drawn from government, academia, and the private sector. The NAST and the SGCR/NAWG jointly are charged with producing templates for both regional and sectoral analyses, to ensure that there is sufficient commonness of purpose that a final synthesis is possible, while not overly constraining the ability of the regions to address issues that are of particular importance to them. The NAST is also specifically charged with preparing this Assessment Plan, and with recommending a review procedure for the final synthesis report.

Individual agencies or groups of agencies, in cooperation with the SGCR/NAWG, have lead responsibility for organizing and sponsoring the sectoral analyses under the guidelines established by the NAST and SGCR/NAWG. Each sectoral team will be composed of both public and private participants.

SGCR/NAWG has primary oversight and coordination responsibility for the regional workshops and analyses. Regional activities will be sponsored by individual agencies or groups of agencies. To help address issues and questions that reach across regions (e.g., water resources, ecosystem migration), an Inter-Regional Forum will be established by the SGCR/NAWG and will be expected to assist NAST and the sectoral analysis teams in addressing such issues. The Inter-Regional Forum will consist of one representative from each region, and will be charged with encouraging sharing of information, methods, data, and findings across regions.

Logistical support for the assessment process for both the SGCR/NAWG and the NAST will be provided by the National Assessment Coordination Office (NACO). As importantly, NACO will serve as a resource for the regional workshops and analyses that are being sponsored through the efforts of the individual Federal agencies. NACO is expected to help provide a framework within which the efforts of large numbers of local, regional, and Federal participants can interact with the national assessment process in ways that provide useful insights and results for the National Synthesis, and to promote development of stakeholder networks that will develop useful insights for their own purposes, quite apart from any final National Synthesis.

Outputs of the National Assessment Process

The outputs of the national assessment process are intended to inform national and regional policy makers, land and resource managers, public and private organizations, and the public. The outputs will be based on the best available scientific information, and must respond to the issues that have been raised by the broad spectrum of stakeholders. There are three classes of products that are envisioned from the national assessment process:

1. The National Assessment Synthesis Report. This report will be both synthesis and summary of sectoral and regional analyses, studies, and workshops combined with additional quantitative analysis to provide an integrated National Assessment of the potential consequences of climate variability and change for the United States. It will be relevant to the policy decisions that both public and private sectors must make. The Synthesis Report is not intended to be a paper in the scientific, peer-reviewed literature, but it will be extensively reviewed (described below), and will be published by the Federal Government. Preparing the National Assessment Synthesis Report is the responsibility of the NAST.

2. Sectoral Studies and Analyses. Each sector chosen by the NAST and the SGCR/NAWG for investigation will be the subject of workshops and quantitative analyses. This work must consider the implications of the National Assessment scenarios and be able to stand on its own merits, as well as contribute to the overall National Assessment Synthesis Report. Of necessity, the National Assessment Synthesis Report will be able to communicate only part of the detail that each sectoral study will generate. Therefore, each sectoral study should result in a substantive report that will be widely reviewed for its technical merit through a process agreed to by the NAST and SGCR/NAWG. In addition, the national assessment process encourages that the contributors to sectoral studies and analyses take every opportunity to prepare papers whose ultimate home is in the scientific, peer-reviewed literature.

3. Regional Reports and Analyses. At regional levels, the reports from the individual regional workshops will be published within a reasonable period of time after appropriate review. In addition, regional analyses will rely on stakeholder interactions and the National Assessment set of scenarios as well as other region-specific projections to explore the implications of climate change and variability on spatial scales that are the most relevant for many potential stakeholders. These reports and analyses will also be critical for the overall effort because the National Assessment Synthesis Report cannot be expected to represent all the detail inherent in any single regional analysis. Therefore, each regional analysis should result in a substantive report that will be widely reviewed for its technical merit and relevance for regional and national stakeholders. In addition, the national assessment process encourages the contributors to regional reports and analyses to take every opportunity to prepare papers whose ultimate home is in the scientific, peer-reviewed literature.

Template for the National Synthesis Report

The National Assessment Synthesis Report will identify the potential consequences of climate variability and change, identify where our knowledge is sound, and where there are major uncertainties, and draw conclusions to the extent knowledge allows about the underlying regional and sectoral sensitivities to the changes one might expect to see, and how those sensitivities compare to other stresses on the overall system. The National Assessment Synthesis Report is meant to be targeted at issues of importance to policy makers in Congress and the Administration, state and local governments, and decisionmakers in the private sector, where many important investment decisions must also be made. The Synthesis Report will not itself be an analysis of alternative policies, but it will provide the scientific foundation on which policy analyses could be based. It will be a relatively brief document; in the range of 50 printed pages. In order to meet these goals, the NAST proposes the following general structure in Table 1.

Templates for the Sectoral and Regional Assessments

The NAST and SGCR/NAWG have identified five sectors that will be analyzed and receive emphasis in the Synthesis Report: agriculture, coastal regions, forestry, human health, and water resources and management.

Sectoral and regional analyses will be conducted using defined scenarios for climate variability and change, and indications of changes in socio-economic conditions. Subgroups of the NAST are now working with members of the SGCR/NAWG to develop the scenarios. With respect to developing scenarios for climate change, several approaches are being proposed: historical analyses, climate model simulations, and region- or sector-specific analyses. An overview of current thinking on the climate and socio-economic scenarios appears in Box 1. All scenario information that will be used by the regional and sectoral analytical teams will be publicly available. The first set of national and regional climatic scenario data, including both the historical climatology of the US and the first set of transient model projections will be available to regional and sectoral investigators by the end of June. A scenario framework for considering socio-economic conditions has also been provided. The NAST has distributed to regions and sectors a document describing the framework in the context of their analyses. Further discussion and refinement will involve discussions with regional and sectoral leaders and agency representatives.

Templates for sectoral and regional analyses will be developed in consultation with the regional and sectoral representatives. Each sectoral and regional analysis should be responsive to guidance provided by NAST and to the questions articulated by the Administration in the charge to the National Assessment Synthesis Team (Appendix 1) as well as to stakeholder interests and concerns. In addition, each analysis will also consider at a minimum the climate scenarios developed for the National Assessment. In many ways, the scenarios are the backbone for subsequent synthesis and analysis. They will provide a common framework from which comparisons of potential impacts on regions and sectors can be derived. Not all analyses can be expected to be comparably detailed or quantitative. However, even for those analyses that are qualitative, a common usage of climate scenario information will provide insights into overall patterns and comparisons that can be obtained no other way.

Sectoral and regional studies should include the participation of stakeholders in all aspects of the process. It is possible that additional papers and analyses by experts will need to be commissioned in order to ensure that the relevant issues are addressed. The expectation is that sectoral analyses will be quantitative. Many regions will also have the capacity and the funding for quantitative analyses. In those cases where quantitative analysis is possible, for example using ecosystem models to project potential changes in ecosystem processes and characteristics, the methodology used will be documented thoroughly.

Review Process

Review is critical for establishing the overall credibility and responsiveness of the national assessment process and its constituent reports. There are several levels at which review is appropriate: technical peer review, editorial review, and overall policy-level review before submission of the National Assessment Synthesis Report to Congress. Because there are multiple products envisioned for the national assessment process, review mechanisms are proposed for those products other than the National Assessment Synthesis Report. The NAST proposes a three-tiered review process for the National Assessment Synthesis Report. The first level is technical peer review. At this level, the SGCR will identify, in conjunction with the NAST, public and private organizations, and the general public, a list of technical experts from agencies and other organizations who will be asked to review the draft Synthesis Report for scientific and technical accuracy and validity. Provisions will also be made for a general comment period at this stage. The review procedure will be coordinated by NACO, which will provide a central distribution and receiving point for written reviews. The NAST will be responsible for responding to and documenting its response to written review comments.

The second level of review envisioned for the National Assessment Synthesis Report is editorial responsiveness. The SGCR will identify a high-level committee of governmental and non-governmental experts whose responsibility will be to ensure that the Synthesis Report is appropriately responsive to its overall charge and that NAST has responded appropriately to the technical review comments it has received. Of course, should technical errors remain in the report, this committee will also have the purview to recommend changes to NAST. Comments will continue to be accepted during this stage of review as well.

The third level of review for the National Assessment Synthesis Report is explicitly governmental. Once the first two reviews are complete, the NAST will submit the National Assessment Synthesis Report for approval by the CENR/NSTC, as requested in the letter from the White House to the SGCR. Because all public and private participants will already have had the opportunity to comment on technical issues, and there will already have been an external review of the responsiveness of the NAST and the Synthesis Report to its charge and of the responsiveness to the technical peer-review, the CENR/NSTC review will focus on final acceptance of the report, and whether it will be transmitted to the Congress.

In addition, it is expected that regional and sectoral teams will involve stakeholders in the review process as appropriate.

Reviews for other outputs of the national assessment process depend on the details of the particular output. Sectoral and regional reports should be widely reviewed as part of the agencies' responsibilities for sponsoring them, but there is not an anticipation of formal review at the SGCR/CENR/NSTC levels. Workshop reports should be reviewed by the Steering Committees of the relevant workshops, if not by the entire roster of participants. The national assessment process emphasizes scientific publication of as much of the regional and sectoral work as possible where normal scientific peer-review processes are envisioned to be sufficient. In addition, for each product a summary report should be prepared that is designed to convey assessment findings to land and resource managers and decision-makers and the general public.

Schedule

The envisioned month-by-month schedule is shown in Table 2 below. This schedule is focused on national activities, specifically those that are the charge of the National Assessment Synthesis Team. It is the key schedule which other components of the national assessment process must take into consideration, in order to determine which of their products and activities will be ready for incorporation at the national level by the end of 1999, and which will be available for future reports.

The schedule is designed to provide ample opportunities for interaction and iteration between regional and sectoral analytical teams and the NAST. It is also designed to ensure that there are ample opportunities for review and input to the final Synthesis Report at all stages of its development, from topic sentences to full-blown review draft. The analysis phase, including both sectoral and regional analyses, is slated to last from mid-1998 through mid-1999, or approximately 1 year. The writing phase begins concurrently with the early stages of the analytical phase, in order to ensure that there are sufficient opportunities for iteration between the National Assessment Synthesis Team and the sectoral and regional analytical teams. The review phase lasts approximately 4 months (Sept.-Dec. 1999), including Administration review.

Outreach and Points of Contact

To foster a public-private partnership in the conduct of the National Assessment, and to promote the interaction of Federal and non-Federal participants, the role of public outreach and communications is extremely important.

The primary responsibility for public outreach and communications will be shared by the SGCR/NAWG and its regional and sectoral partners. They will assist in the development of educational material about the national assessment process, and ensure that the regional cooperators continue to be able to make their wishes and concerns known at a national level. The NACO will be responsible for maintaining and distributing minutes and action items from NAST meetings, and for ensuring that the agencies and all regional cooperators are informed about national-level decisions and progress. The agencies that comprise the SGCR/NAWG bear a special responsibility in this regard, since they have already begun to work directly with the regions, to ensure that the regional cooperators and the public are informed about the overall process through web sites, newsletters, and other similar mechanisms.

The NAST, as a FACA committee, will function in an open manner that will engender confidence in the entire process on the part of all participants and stakeholders. The NAST will publicize its meetings and will also make an effort near the end of calendar 1998, at approximately the first anniversary of the National Forum on the Consequences of Climate Change for the Nation, to have a larger, open public meeting that serves to inform all participants of the progress to date, and to solicit comments and concerns for mid-course corrections. The NAST will not take the place of SGCR responsibilities for public outreach and communication. However, the NAST will participate strongly in partnership with the SGCR and regional/sectoral teams to communicate the results of all assessment activities to the public and decisionmakers.

Subsequent to publication of the National Assessment Synthesis Report, the agencies and members of the NAST should expect to conduct several presentations in different forums that outline both the results of the assessment, and the process by which the assessment was performed and reviewed. Public and private briefings of key people in the Executive and Legislative branches of the Federal government, as well as State and local officials, and key decision makers in the private sector will be an important part of ensuring that the important messages of the National Assessment are received.