USU Faculty Author Commentary Outlining Research Priorities for Robust Climate Assessments

LOGAN — Jessica Schad and Stacia Ryder, faculty in Utah State University’s School of Social Sciences, are co-authors of the commentary “Research priorities for robust climate assessments in the United States” published in Earth’s Future and Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The paper brings together 175 authors to outline research priorities that can inform future national, regional, local, sectoral, and topical climate assessments.

The commentary is the first paper in the U.S. Climate Collection: Informing Assessment of Risks and Solutions — a joint special collection of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society that will publish U.S.-focused climate assessment science and research synthesis papers to inform future national and sub-national assessments.

Schad contributed expertise on rural communities, focusing on how demographic and economic change can shape their exposure and response to climate risks. She emphasized the need for future assessments to examine the distinct challenges rural places face, the resources they can draw on, and the local factors that affect their ability to prepare and adapt.

“Rural communities face very different climate risks, and they don’t all have the same resources to respond,” Schad said. “Understanding those local differences can help communities and decision-makers identify solutions that fit the places and people they serve.”

Ryder contributed expertise on the U.S. Southwest region, focusing on managing uneven water supply extremes, increasing aridity, heat and temperature-related risks, the uneven impacts of compounding and cascading disasters, and how differences in communities’ vulnerability and adaptive capacity affect their resilience to the impacts of these risks.

“Over half of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs are shrinking, and about 2 billion people live in these drying lake basins. Recent climate models suggest that up to 850 million people could face water shortages due to river drying. Yet this global problem is perhaps more acutely felt in arid regions like the U.S. Southwest, which continues to experience prolonged drought and declines in surface and groundwater availability,” Ryder said. “Given this, managing uneven water supply extremes in the U.S. Southwest is essential for sustaining our communities in the region.”

The commentary identifies assessment opportunities and research needs across planetary-scale systems, environmental settings, economic sectors, U.S. regions, and U.S. international interests. Across these areas, the authors identify several cross-cutting priorities for research synthesis, including

• How greenhouse gas emissions continue to alter and amplify climate hazards;
• How compounding extremes and cascading risks are straining legacy policies, infrastructure, and institutions;
• How social systems shape both climate impacts and responses;
• How future assessments should evaluate mitigation, adaptation, disaster management, climate interventions, and resilience planning and implementation decisions as a climate action portfolio.

Scientific assessments synthesize complex bodies of evidence so households, communities, businesses, institutions, and governments can make informed decisions as climate hazards intensify.

The most recent U.S. National Climate Assessment was published in 2023; scientific understanding has advanced since then, and climate assessments are continuing by states, localities, and businesses.

The commentary argues that the pace of assessment and the integration of science with decision-making must accelerate as climate impacts continue to grow.