E-grāmata: Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change

America's Climate Choices is a coordinated set of activities convened in response to a request from Congress to "study the serious and sweeping issues associated with global climate change, including the science and technology challenges involved, and provide advice on actions and strategies the nation can take to respond." Expert committees were assembled to assess options and write consensus reports. Collectively, the America's Climate Choices reports provide a broad, action-oriented, and authoritative set of analyses to inform and guide responses to climate change across the nation.

Across the United States, impacts of climate change are already evident. Some extreme weather events have become more frequent and intense. The proportion of precipitation that falls as rain rather than snow has increased across the western United States and Arctic sea ice has been reduced significantly. Sea level has been rising faster than at any time in recent history, threatening the natural and built environments on the coasts. Even if emissions of greenhouse gases were substantially reduced now, climate change and its resulting impacts would continue for some time to come.

To date, decisions related to managing resources and protecting people and infrastructure have been based on records in the recent past, when climate was relatively stable. Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change calls for a new paradigm-one that considers a range of possible future climate conditions and impacts that may be well outside the realm of past experience.

Adaptation requires actions from many decision makers in federal, state, tribal, and local governments; the private sector; non-governmental organizations; and community groups. However, current efforts are hampered by a lack of solid information about the benefits, costs, and effectiveness of various adaptation options; climate information on regional and local scales; and a lack of coordination. Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change emphasizes the need for a national adaptation strategy that provides technical and scientific resources, incentives to begin adaptation planning, guidance across jurisdictions, shared lessons learned, and support of scientific research to expand knowledge of impacts and adaptation.

The America's Climate Choices project, convened by the National Research Council, studied issues associated with global climate change and response strategies. This book reports on the work of one of the panels of the Committee on America's Climate Choices, which investigated strategies for adapting to climate change in different regions, sectors, and populations. The report draws on numerous case studies to examine lessons from past experience. The panel has concluded that it is not possible to provide a list of actions to be taken in each region. Instead, the report emphasizes that decisions need to be made in the context of promoting long-term sustainability objectives, such as social, economic, and ecological welfare. The report contains color photos, maps and charts, and 20 pages of appendices offering panel documents and profiles of panel members. Material here was first presented at the March 2009 Summit on America's Climate Choices. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)