3 November 2017
WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Global Change Research Program today released the 2017 Climate Science Special Report, part one of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4). The report captures new information about past, current and future climate change, and builds on the existing body of science to summarize the current state of knowledge and provide the scientific foundation for the NCA4 regional and sectoral chapters, scheduled to be released in late 2018.
The Climate Science Special Report (CSSR) finds global temperatures continue to rise and human activities are the primary driver. The report, which primarily focuses on changes in the U.S., also finds high temperature and precipitation extremes are becoming more common; oceans are rising, warming and becoming more acidic; and there is a significant possibility for unanticipated changes in the climate system, among other findings. Read a summary of the report written by the study’s lead authors on Eos.org.
The report includes contributions from 40 American Geophysical Union members and includes more than 230 references to scientific studies published in AGU journals. Several AGU scientists are available to comment on the report and the science behind it. AGU will also hold a session on the report and its key findings at the upcoming AGU Fall Meeting in New Orleans.
Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist, a Professor in the Department of Political Science, and Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. Her research focuses on understanding what climate change means to human and natural systems at the local to regional scale. She is the lead author of CSSR Chapter 4: Climate Models, Scenarios, and Predictions; a co-author on the CSSR Executive Summary, Chapter 6: Temperature Changes in the United States and Chapter 15: Potential Surprises: Compound Extremes and Tipping Elements; and the lead author for the NCA4 Chapter 2: Our Changing Climate.
Email: [email protected] (Laura James, assistant)
Phone: +1 (806) 834-8665
* Note: Katharine Hayhoe will be in the UK from Nov 12 to Nov 23.
Radley Horton is an Associate Research Professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Radley’s areas of interest include extreme weather events, sea level rise, and climate model evaluation. He also leads several projects that apply climate information to impact and adaptation assessment. He is an author of the CSSR Executive Summary, CSSR Chapter 12: Sea Level Rise, and CSSR Chapter 15: Potential Surprises: Compound Extremes and Tipping Elements.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1 (646) 320-9938
*Note: Radley Horton will be unavailable November 17.
Robert Kopp is Director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and a Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. His research focuses on understanding uncertainty in past and future climate change, with major emphases on sea level change and on the interactions between physical climate change and the economy. He is the lead author of CSSR Chapter 15: Potential Surprises: Compound Extremes and Tipping Elements; and co-author on CSSR Chapter 1: Our Globally Changing Climate, Chapter 4: Climate Models, Scenarios, and Predictions, and Chapter 12: Sea Level Rise.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1 (732) 200-2705
Anastasia Romanou is a Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in New York. She is interested in ocean-climate interactions, how the ocean changes and how it is being changed with climate variations and changes. She has experience in numerical modeling of different aspects of the climate system, ocean circulation and the carbon cycle and in analyzing satellite and in situ observations to support and inform numerical simulations of the Earth System. She is an author of CSSR Chapter 2: Physical Drivers of Climate Change, Chapter 12: Sea Level Rise, and Chapter 13: Ocean Acidification and Other Ocean Changes.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1 (917) 674-1273
*Note: Anastasia Romanou will be unavailable November 6.
Ross Salawitch is a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Science, the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, and the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland. His research focuses on the use of models and observations to quantify the effects of human activity on the composition of Earth’s atmosphere, with specializations in the areas of stratospheric ozone, tropospheric ozone, the global carbon cycle, and global climate. He served as a review editor for the CSSR.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1 (301) 405-5396 (office); +1 (626)487-5643 (cell)
Sarah Doherty is a Senior Research Scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her expertise is in how particulate pollution (aerosols) interact with sunlight and affect climate. She has made measurements of aerosols at locations around the globe and has works with climate modelers to incorporate what is learned from field measurements into the models. From 2003 to 2012 she was the Executive Director of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project. She is an author of the CSSR Executive Summary and CSSR Chapter 2: Physical Drivers of Climate Change.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1 (206) 543-6674 (office); +1 (206) 898-0395 (cell)
*Note: Sarah Doherty will be unavailable November 3. She can be reached via email or cell phone November 4 and 5. Please note that she is on Pacific Time.
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Nanci Bompey
+1 (202) 777-7524
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