Need For Actions to Reduce and Adapt

America's Climate Choices, a series of congressionally-mandated studies, emphasizes why the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change. Available to read online or purchase PDF or print copies:

• Advancing the Science of Climate Change


• Limiting the Magnitude of Climate Change


• Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change


• Informing an Effective Response to Climate Change

Watch video, America's Climate Choices Series

Climate decisions

National Academies created the Panel on Strategies and Methods for Climate Related Decision Support "to provide a framework and a set of strategies and methods for organizing and evaluating decision support activities related to climate change." In evaluating the growing need for climate-related decision support, the Panel offers:

Both conceptually and practically, people and organizations will have to adjust what may be life-long assumptions to meet the potential consequences of climate change. How and where should bridges be built? What zoning rules may need to be changed? How can targets for reduced carbon emissions be met? These and myriad other questions will need to be answered in the coming years and decades.

The published study "drawing on evidence from past efforts to organize science for improved decision making, develops guidance for government agencies and other institutions that will provide or use information for coping with climate change."

Informing Decisions in a Changing Climate, National Academies Press (available online as an Open Text Document)
2009, 200 pages