cc: "Mike Hulme (E-mail)" , "'GJJenkins@meto.gov.uk'" date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 11:39:35 +0100 from: Merylyn McKenzie-Hedger subject: US National Climate Assessment-ideas for UKCIP? to: Tom Downing , Megan Gawith , John Orr , "Tim Denne (ERM)" When I was in Washington for the IPCC meeting on tech transfer (on my leave), I called into the USGCRP office (location of the IPCC TSU) and talked with Mike McCracken of the US National Assessment of the Consequences of Climate Change. Their program is making rapid strides with a series of 20 regional workshops almost completed for the entire country- each sponsored by various government agencies and departments from EPA, DOI, DOE, USFA, USDA to NOAA and NASA. They also have 5 sectoral teams covering agriculture, forests, coastal zones, human health and water preparing national assessments. They are due to report to Congress next April and are also driven by what is the obvious- the US Country Studies Programme has meant that more is known about impacts in developing countries than the US (and indeed other Annex 1 countries.......). I was given a set of very useful documents which I am sending round. Their deliberations on strategy, approaches to climate scenarios and socio-economic scenarios have mirrored ours but they have produced different outcomes. Basically they are less worried about methodology, integration,coherent structure and precedents and more concerned to get things moving.(This may lead to problems down the line when they try and put reports together although a data management group has produced guidelines and templates for studies.) Their approach can be characterised as an informal, CCIRG type exercise undertaken at a regional level by stakeholders, led by a local university, and driven from a policy and communications perspective. They have an on-going time frame and will prepare synthesis reports as when required using what information is available at that time. I urge you to read the documents as they provide a stimulating experience. Their approach seems to be useful for us particularly in respect of the following: 1) Greater involvement of government agencies across the board ( I have already raised this with DETR and hopefully this could lead to an autumn meeting of Governmental Departments). But that doesn't meant the agencies control the process- they are activating a nation-wide process. It is viewed as a 'pioneering exercise in environmental policy with a three way engagement among scientists, policy-makers and stakeholders'. 2) Climate scenarios etc- a)they are using a historical climatology of the US since 1850 to examine the potential consequences of continuation of past climatic trends and future occurrence of past climatic variations; b ) AOGCM simulations: They have decided to use the Canadian model because it has daily data, and are distributing data in ASCII and ARC/Info GIS format . c) Development of regional scenarios by regional teams either by downscaling or nested GCMs and also development of 'what if' scenarios to cover specific vulnerabilities. (The question of archiving data sets and providing user support has only just been raised on the climate scenarios.) 3) They are trying to get 'stories' developed for different areas around the main priority issues and key findings to attract public interest. Some ideas already have been developed for some areas, more were due to be developed at a mega workshop 2 weeks ago (National Assessment Workshop in Monterey, CA ). 4) Their approach to regional workshops is interesting as they have got wide stakeholder buy-in. They tackle them as brainstorming sessions which generate lots of issues to study. They use national (Gore) and 'local' politicians Follow-ups are then focused on 2-3 issues. All the workshops have addressed 3 questions: a) What other environmental issues are you facing? b) How will climate change amplify/ modify/ ameliorate these issues and produce new stresses? c) Information needs, d) Win-win solutions. 5) On socio-economic scenarios they developed a very pragmatic but effective approach suggesting that studies handling impacts cover two types of variables: impact and context with a high and low range in each case (2 x 2). The selection of these variables would be carried out depending on the study. As a separate complementary exercise, ORNL has been asked to generate background data on population, landuse and other trends on a high-low range of confidence to provide an overall context on a future world. Read the detail yourselves- it is quite robust and I solves most of the problems we have encountered, in my view. 6) They seem to have got the US business community involved at a regional level rather more successfully than we have so far which is counter-intuitive. They play a greater stress on climate variability, emphasise the exercise has nothing to do with Kyoto and that there is a need to cope with the climate change which is occurring.