Resources

The U.S. Global Change Research Program Act of 1990 requires the U.S. government to do periodic climate impact assessments of the United States. This Elements of Change report serves as a guide to help outline the content and approach taken for this important assessment. The content of this report reflects the discussions that took place at a 1997 AGCI meeting among federal agency representatives, university academics, and others. During the meeting, participants explored the critical scientific issues relating to the assessment and drafted a plan for its completion.

Characterizing uncertainty is a major issue in all scientific discourse, but it is of particular importance in climate change research. Widely publicized climate change findings, such as the periodic reports authored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), must find precision in their language so that the published findings are neither understated nor exaggerated and can be taken seriously by policymakers, the media, and the public. This Elements of Change report tackles this problem by summarizing the proceedings of a 1996 AGCI meeting that was convened to discuss how uncertainty is communicated in reports such as the one put out by the IPCC. In attendance were climate change researchers, policy analysts, and media experts, and this report addresses scientific, media, and policy related issues pertaining to uncertainty.