Science Policy, Climate Science and Doing Subnational Climate Assessments

• In Event: Climate Change in Context: Local Use, Creation, and Interaction with Science

Abstract

Increasingly, subnational governments including US states are undertaking climate change assessments ostensibly to generate locally relevant information more useful for informing state and local decision makers and, through the assessment process, to develop the capacity to jointly learn about climate impacts and potential responses. The rise of subnational assessments comes in response to the perception that assessments at other scales such as international climate assessments (e.g., the IPCC) or national climate assessments (e.g., the United States National Assessment) do not produce information that meets the decision making needs of state and local decision makers nor do these assessment process help state and local decision makers build capacity to learn and respond. While much has been learned about how to conduct effective assessments at the international (refs) and national (refs) scales, little research or guidance exists that informs how to conduct effective assessments at state or other subnational scales. Moreover, while scholars have interrogated climate models and their outputs for use in international and national assessments (refs), few studies that we know of addresses the question of the adequacy of climate models applied at much more localized scales. We aim to begin to fill this gap through a systematic examination of state assessments using semi-structured interviews and a workshop to understand both the science policy process that shapes assessments, challenges with climate modeling, and how climate assessments are created and the science used (or not).

Author

• Christine Kirchhoff, University of Connecticut