A new draft of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) is available for reading and for public comment (until April 12, 2013) at http://ncadac.globalchange.gov/

We will post the final NCA when it becomes available.

What is the NCA?

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is being conducted under the auspices of the Global Change Research Act of 1990.

The GCRA requires a report to the President and the Congress every four years that integrates, evaluates, and interprets the findings of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP); 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 analyzes current trends in global change, both human-induced and natural, and projects major trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years.

National climate assessments act as status reports about climate change science and impacts. They are based on observations made across the country and compare these observations to predictions from climate system models. The NCA aims to incorporate advances in the understanding of climate science into larger social, ecological, and policy systems, and with this provide integrated analyses of impacts and vulnerability.

The NCA will help evaluate the effectiveness of our mitigation and adaptation activities and identify economic opportunities that arise as the climate changes.  It will also serve to integrate scientific information from multiple sources and highlight key findings and significant gaps in our knowledge.

The NCA aims to help the federal government prioritize climate science investments, and in doing so will help to provide the science that can be used by communities around the country to plan more sustainably for our future.

The previous Assessment produced the report Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States in 2009. Portions of that assessment were included as required reading for some ETS courses.