Recurring Climate Reports
A selection of climate publications that are updated and released regularly
Fifth National Climate Assessment
Summary
This is the United States Government’s recurring report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. It is a congressionally mandated interagency effort that provides the scientific foundation to support informed decision-making across the United States.
Key Points
This resource outlines a full scope of current and anticipated climate impacts, including: safe water supplies threatened by flooding, drought, sea level rise; food system disruptions; homes/property at risk from sea level rise and extreme weather; population displacement; infrastructure and services disrupted; physical and mental health degradation; transformation of ecosystems (terrestrial and water); economic growth slowing.
Excellent examples of what transformative adaptation looks like:
“Shifting water-intensive industry to match projected rainfall”
Redesigning buildings to prevent heat impact
Includes a companion podcast: https://globalchange.gov/our-work/fifth-national-climate-assessment.
Relevance to Digital Stewardship
Calls out risks specifically related to what our field protects and preserves: “Climate change is disrupting cultures, heritage, and traditions” (section 3).
Highlights a broad range of climate emergencies that increasingly impact digital stewardship, such as the sea level rise, extreme weather events, the disruption of infrastructure, and a slowing of economic growth.
Source
United States Government: “The findings in this report are based on a comprehensive review and assessment of information sources determined to meet the standards and documentation required under the Information Quality Act and the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (Appendix 2), including peer-reviewed literature, other literature, Indigenous Knowledge, other expert and local knowledge, and climate data processed and prepared for authors by NOAA’s Technical Support Unit (TSU; see Guide to the Report section below and Appendix 3).”
Full Citation
Crimmins, A. R. (2023). Fifth National Climate Assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC. https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/
The 2023 State of the Climate Report: Entering Uncharted Territory
Summary
This is the 2023 annual report from William J. Ripple et al. The original was created in 2020 with more than 15,000 scientist signaries.
Key Points
2023 saw an unprecedented and alarming increase of climate related disasters:
“The rapid pace of change has surprised scientists and caused concern about the dangers of extreme weather, risky climate feedback loops, and the approach of damaging tipping points sooner than expected (Armstrong McKay et al. 2022, Ripple et al. 2023).”
20 of 35 of the Earth’s “vital signs” are showing record extremes. The report provides visual graphics of each of these.
The second to last section, “Scientists’ warning recommendations” provides generalized policy recommendations as they relate to economics, stopping warming, stopping coal consumption, feedback loops, food security and undernourishment, and justice.
Relevance to Digital Preservation
There is no direct mention of digital preservation in this resource since the focus of the report lies in the overall impact and trends witnessed during 2023. The second to last section, “Scientists’ warning recommendations” provide generalized policy recommendations that decision makers can advocate for in their local context.
Source
Published on BioScience, an open access journal published by Oxford Academic, which identifies itself as a “peer-reviewed, heavily cited, monthly journal with content written and edited for accessibility to researchers, educators, and students alike.”
Full Citation
Ripple, W. J., Wolf, C., Gregg, J. W., Rockström, J., Newsome, T. M., Law, B. E., Marques, L., Lenton, T. M., Xu, C., Huq, S., Simons, L., & King, S. D. A. (2023). The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory. BioScience, 73(12), 841–850. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad080
Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report for Policy Makers
Summary
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the world’s leading authority on climate change. There have been calls for the next IPCC report to focus on tipping points.
Page 7: good visual of climate change impacts and human influences on those impacts.
Pages 14 and 16: good visuals of the consequences of degrees of warming for different systems, etc. on a global scale.
Pages 8-9, 19, 27-30 focus on adaptation.
“Key barriers to adaptation are limited resources, lack of private sector and citizen engagement, insufficient mobilization of finance (including for research), low climate literacy, lack of political commitment, limited research and/or slow and low uptake of adaptation science, and low sense of urgency. There are widening disparities between the estimated costs of adaptation and the finance allocated to adaptation (high confidence). Adaptation finance has come predominantly from public sources, and a small proportion of global tracked climate finance was targeted to adaptation and an overwhelming majority to mitigation (very high confidence). Although global tracked climate finance has shown an upward trend since AR5, current global financial flows for adaptation, including from public and private finance sources, are insufficient and constrain implementation of adaptation options, especially in developing countries (high confidence). Adverse climate impacts can reduce the availability of financial resources by incurring losses and damages and through impeding national economic growth, thereby further increasing financial constraints for adaptation, particularly for developing and least developed countries (medium confidence). {2.3.2, 2.3.3}” (page 9)
“ Actions that focus on sectors and risks in isolation and on short-term gains often lead to maladaptation over the long term, creating lock-ins of vulnerability, exposure and risks that are difficult to change. For example, seawalls effectively reduce impacts to people and assets in the short term but can also result in lock-ins and increase exposure to climate risks in the long term unless they are integrated into a long-term adaptive plan. Maladaptation can be avoided by flexible, multi-sectoral, inclusive, long-term planning and implementation of adaptation actions, with co-benefits to many sectors and systems. (high confidence). {2.3.2, 3.2}” (page 19)
Pages 27-30: changes needed across multiple systems and sectors, useful visual on page 27
Key Points
“The effectiveness of adaptation, including ecosystem-based and most water-related options, will decrease with increasing warming” (page 19).
Maladaptive responses can worsen existing inequities especially for Indigenous Peoples and marginalized groups and decrease ecosystem and biodiversity resilience (page 19).
Relevance to Digital Stewardship
The need for many sectors and systems to change touches digital preservation particularly when it comes to digital storage. Some of the factors in the paper could contribute to risk assessment reports and digital preservation policy development.
Source
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. The IPCC is an organization of governments that are members of the United Nations or WMO. An open and transparent review by experts and governments around the world is part of the IPCC process. The IPCC does not conduct its own research. Most popular media outlets and resources use IPCC predictions to determine the likelihood of certain climate-related events occurring. It has been criticized for its slow, cautious, and consensus-based approach. One of the most concerning criticisms is that IPCC modeling does not accurately account for tipping points.
Full Citation
IPCC, 2023: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, pp. 1-34, doi: 10.59327/IPCC/AR6-9789291691647.001