William D. Solecki - Climate Change and U.S. Cities: Urban Systems, Sectors, and Prospects for Action

CONVENING LEAD AUTHORS:
William Solecki (City University of New York),
Cynthia Rosenzweig (NASA GISS)

LEAD AUTHORS:
Radley Horton (Columbia University),
Alex de Sherbinin (Columbia University CIESIN)

THE GOAL OF THIS BOOK IS TO ASSESS the new knowledge and information about climate change and U.S. cities. It is now known that climate change is already being experienced by U.S. cities through gradual shifts in climate variables and through extreme events (Melillo et al. 2014). This book attempts to document the state-of-the-art understanding of current and future climate risk for U.S. cities, urban systems and the residents that depend on them. Contemporary climate change represents an era of increasing climate variability that is driving urban managers and residents to be more flexible and adaptive in response to these dynamic risks. Urban systems such as water, energy, and transportation infrastructure are designed and managed to operate within an expected range of environmental conditions. Climate change is associated with gradual and punctuated shifts in the environmental baseline of cities and in turn is placing increased stress on city life.

This book is an expansion and extension of the urban focused assessment research presented in the 2014 U.S. National Climate Assessment and a follow-up to the work being done as part of theFourth National Climate Assessment due to be released at the end of 2018. Urban issues have played an important role in large scale climate assessment activities since the late 1990s. For example, as part of the initial National Climate Assessment in 2000, Rosenzweig and Solecki (2001) led the development of the first major assessment of how a large city and its surrounding metropolitan region could be impacted by climate variability and change. The work focued on the New York Metropolitan Region. For the 2009 Assessment, climate change and cities issues were presented within several sections of the report. The results of 2009 assessment provided some updates of the findings from the 2000 asssesment effort with a focus on new climate models and associated impacts and vulnerabilities. The 2014 National Climate Assessment for this first time includes a chapter with urban in its title (i.e., Chapter 11 Vulnerability, Urban, and Infrastructure). The NCA4 also will include an urban related chapter.

The research team assembled for this book focused on an assessment of the scholarly literature of climate change and U.S. cities, with an emphasis on research findings generated in the past five years (since early 2012). The scope of the book is to create a foundational document on climate change and U.S. cities that assesses state-of-the-art knowledge and information across a broad set of topics. The assessment is designed to be policy relevant that is particularly important as cities have become agents of climate action moving forward after the COP21 meeting in December of 2015 and the resulting Paris Agreement. The audience for this current assessment book includes a wide variety of interested parties, including policymakers, academics, and science and technical experts, as well as the general public.

1.1 Urban Issues - Results from previous U.S. National Climate Assessments

As part of the 2000 U.S. National Climate Assessment the Climate Change and a Global City Report was published (Rosenzweig and Solecki 2001). The most significant conclusions from that assessmentillustrated the key potential impacts, vulnerabilities, opportunities and challenges across a set of set of urban sectors including water, energy, transportation, public health, and decision-making. The assessment documented that climate change already was having an impact on the region and that significant populations and assets were at risk. Because of the tightly coupled character of urban systems, integrative or cascading impacts from extreme climate events could occur in urban areas.