Metropolitan East Coast Regional Assessment of Climate Change Impacts

As scientific research has improved understandings of the complex ways that climate and other facets of the global environment are changing, increased attention has focused on the impacts of those changes on people and ecosystems. In response to these changes, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) have coordinated planning for a series of workshops that will focus on the impacts of global climate change on regional scales. Eight workshops in this series and a national climate change forum were held in 1997; ten additional regional workshops are planned for 1998. This award provides support to Columbia University for the conduct of a workshop and related regional assessment activities that will focus on the regional impacts of global climate change in the Metro East Coast region that stretches from Boston to Washington but that focuses on the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. The workshop will be conducted on the Columbia campus on 23-24 March 1998. About two hundred people from the region are expected to attend the workshop. The workshop will consist of a set of alternating formats, including plenary sessions, panel presentations, break-out discussions, and open-discussion sessions. Topics on which attention will be focused include the impacts of global climate change on business and finance, state and local governments, human health , transportation and commerce, energy, water, recreation and tourism, and natural and renewable resources. A written report will be prepared and disseminated by the workshop organizers soon after the conclusion of the workshop. In addition to conducting the workshop, the principal investigator and colleagues from regional institutions will continue development of a regional stakeholders network and contribute to the development of multi-regional syntheses and national sectoral cross-cutting assessments. This workshop and related assessment activities will provide valuable new insights into the impacts of global change on a diverse set of sectors and activities in the Metro East Coast region. Because it is being conducted as part of a coordinated set of regional workshops, its outcomes will also be useful in a comparative framework as the U.S. assesses likely impacts of environmental change. In addition to its scientific value, the Metro East Coast assessment will engage local residents from many different fields into discussions that will facilitate public education and outreach about this important topic.