Climate Change - Impacts

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is currently funding an assessment of the potential impacts of climate change and possible adaptation strategies specific to New York State, known as the ClimAID project.  A link to the report will be available here when it is released in the spring of 2010. The results of the study will factor into the development of the adaptation section of the NYS Climate Action Plan.

Other organizations have created impact assessments for several regions of the U.S. These reports indicate that climate-related changes the northeastern U.S. is likely to experience include the following:

• Extreme heat and declining air quality are likely to pose increasing problems for human health, especially in urban areas.                
• Agricultural production, including dairy, fruit, and maple syrup, are likely to be adversely affected as favorable climates shift.               
• Severe flooding due to sea-level rise and heavy downpours is likely to occur more frequently.               
• The projected reduction in snow cover will adversely affect winter recreation and the industries that rely upon it.                 
• The center of lobster fisheries is projected to continue its northward shift and the cod fishery on Georges Bank is likely to be diminished.              
• Sea level rise may threaten coastal fresh water supplies of groundwater. 

For more information on climate change impacts in the northeastern US see the following
:
U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP): Coordinates and integrates federal research on changes in the global environment and their implications for society. Thirteen departments and agencies participate in the USGCRP (formerly known as the U.S. Climate Change Science Program). Since its inception, the USGCRP has supported research and observational activities in collaboration with several other national and international science programs.

The Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA): A collaboration among the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a team of more than fifty independent experts to develop and communicate a new assessment of climate change, impacts on climate-sensitive sectors, and solutions in the northeastern United States. Its first report, Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast: Science, Impacts, and Solutions, was published in  July 2007.

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority 

For information on climate change impacts at the national and international levels, see the following:

Climate Change Science Compendium 2009, A United Nations Environment Program report reviewing some 400 major peer-reviewed scientific papers in the last three years that add to understanding of the impacts of climate change. The Compendium includes findings from new technologies that enhance knowledge of Earth's Systems. It suggests "the pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). [And] the newly emerging science points to some events thought likely to occur in longer-term time horizons, as already happening or set to happen far sooner than had previously been thought."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), The leading scientific body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences. The IPCC has issued four assessments of climate impacts, the most recent in 2007. Chapter 14 of the IPPC report focuses on North American Climate imacts. 

National Research Council, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (2001)
Center for Health and the Global Environment, Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological, and Economic Dimensions, Harvard Medical School, November 2005

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