UNH Researcher Lends Expertise to Help Outline Priorities in U.S. Climate Assessment
Serita Frey, professor of natural resources and the environment at UNH, is a co-author of the commentary “Research priorities for robust climate assessments in the United States.” The paper brings together 175 authors across the United States to outline research priorities that can inform future national, regional, local, sectoral and topical climate assessments.
The commentary was published in the journals Earth’s Future and Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. It 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 that can inform future national and sub-national assessments.
Frey contributed to the commentary through leading the section on forests which identifies key research priorities for understanding how U.S. forests are responding to climate change, including the effects of warming, drought, wildfire, pests, and other disturbances. It also highlights the need to better quantify the role of forests in carbon storage and climate mitigation, while supporting biodiversity and ecosystem services.
“As climate risks intensify, forests will play an increasingly important role in carbon storage, biodiversity conservation, and community resilience," says Frey. “This paper identifies key research priorities needed to ensure that future climate assessments capture both the vulnerabilities of forests and their potential to help address climate change.”
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; and 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.