• Announcing the
  2008 Edition of Understanding and Responding to Climate Change.
  This booklet presents recommendations from the National Academies' many expert reports on climate change in an easy-to-read format.
  
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• Get presentations and audio from the National Academies' Summit on America's Energy Future, held March 2008. Also available is a new booklet entitled What You Need to Know About Energy.

This panel will address the question: "What can be done to adapt to the impacts of climate change?"

The panel will describe, analyze, and assess actions and strategies to reduce vulnerability, increase adaptive capacity, improve resiliency, and promote successful adaptation to climate change in different regions, sectors, systems, and populations. The costs, benefits, limitations, tradeoffs, and uncertainties associated with different options and strategies should be assessed qualitatively and, to the extent practicable, quantitatively, using the scenarios of future climate change and vulnerability provided by the Climate Change Study Committee. The panel will draw on existing reports and assessments and use case studies to identify lessons learned from past experiences, promising current approaches, and potential new directions. The issues and examples considered by the panel should be drawn from a variety of regions and sectors, focusing on domestic actions but also considering international dimensions, and should cover a range of temporal and spatial scales. The following are sample sub-questions that illustrate the range of issues the panel will address:

• What strategies and options have proven effective at reducing vulnerability, increasing adaptive capacity, or improving resiliency to climate change in different sectors (e.g., water, energy, ecosystems, agriculture, heath, etc.), regions, and populations?
• What are the benefits, costs, and risks associated with current actions to adapt to climate change, and what is the potential for enhancing their effectiveness and/or transferring them to other sectors, regions, or populations?
• How are vulnerabilities and adaptation capabilities expected to change in the future under different scenarios of population, economic, ecological, and technological change?
• What additional options, strategies, and opportunities might be available in the future to reduce vulnerability, increase adaptive capacity, or improve resilience to climate change?
• What are the likely economic and noneconomic consequences of different courses of adaptive action (e.g., inaction, "reactive" adaptation, "anticipatory" adaptation, and "adaptive management" strategies)? Which actions will be most difficult to implement?
• What interactions and synergies exist between actions to adapt to climate change and actions to limit future the magnitude of future climate change?
• What can be done to address adaptation issues that span multiple sectors and scales?

The panel should also provide input to the Climate Change Study Committee on the following integrating questions:

• What short-term actions can be taken to adapt effectively to climate change?
• What promising long-term strategies, investments, and opportunities could be pursued to adapt to climate change?
• What are the major scientific and technological advances (e.g., new observations, improved models, research priorities, etc.) needed to promote effective adaptation to climate change?
• What are the major impediments (e.g., practical, institutional, economic, ethical, intergenerational, etc.) to effective adaptation to climate change, and what can be done to overcome these impediments?
• What can be done to adapt to climate change at different levels (e.g., local, state, regional, national, and in collaboration with the international community) and in different sectors (e.g., nongovernmental organizations, the business community, the research and academic communities, individuals and households, etc.)?

The Panel on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change will include approximately 14 members drawn from a range of communities including academia, business and industry, different levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and the international community. It will include members knowledgeable about climate adaptation issues across different regions of the United States, across the range of potentially affected sectors (e.g., water resources, agriculture, natural and managed ecosystems, human health, transportation, etc.), and across the different entities that may need to adapt to climate change (e.g., businesses, individuals and households, different government agencies and programs, etc.). It will also include experts familiar with climate change impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptive capacity; with analytic techniques and decision processes useful for comparing adaptation options and considering their relative effectiveness and costs; the economic, political, and social complexities associated with adapting to climate change; the international dimensions of climate change adaptation; and other relevant expertise.