Assessing Regional Risks from Global Climate Change. Ann Fisher, Pennsylvania State University, 107 Armsby Bldg., University Park, PA 16802
Policy decisions in international negotiations depend on participants’ expectations about potential climate change impacts on individual countries and regions (as well as their costs for prevention, adaptation, and mitigation). Most current models are more appropriate for very large areas (e.g., North America) than for the scale of a country or its regions (e.g., the mid-Atlantic region). Vice President Gore initiated a series of workshops to identify 1) regional vulnerabilities to climate variability and climate change, 2) data and models available to assess those risks, and 3) research needed to fill gaps in regional modeling and data. This "nugget" will highlight scientific and technical findings from the first round of workshops (to be summarized at a national workshop in November). Their output will provide 1) input for more informed expectations at the December negotiations in Kyoto, 2) a foundation for integrated regional assessments (to be conducted in 1998) that can be aggregated to support a national scientific assessment in 1999, and 3) input for regional and national research agendas.