Allison Crimmins

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Verified

Allison verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• MS Oceanography; MPP Intn'l and Global Affairs
• Executive Director Industry Proving Ground at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Climate assessments consolidate our understanding of possible future climate conditions as represented by climate projections, which are largely based on the output of global climate models. Over the past 30 years, the scientific insights gained from climate projections have been refined through model structural improvements, emerging constraints o...

Nature” is a broad term with neither a standard definition nor consistent use, even across federal reports like the National Climate Assessment (NCA). The process of defining complex topics like “nature” is difficult given the broad range in people’s understandings of and relationships with the natural world. To support the development of future na...

Art x Climate was the first-ever gallery of visual art to be included in the National Climate Assessment. This letter outlines the purpose and process of Art x Climate and highlights three Art x Climate artists and their work. The letter concludes with lessons learned from this project: the need for cross-disciplinary respect among the arts and sci...

Scientific assessments are tools used to look across a broad body of knowledge and draw overarching conclusions about the state of the science. They allow experts to synthesize technical knowledge and develop broad understanding of observed and future trends, risks, and opportunities. The National Climate Assessment (NCA), a major climate report of...

Correspondence: When the climate community first started examining the prospect of human-induced climate change via climate models in the1970s and 1980s, 2100 was more than 100years away. We are now nearing 75 years from the turn of the century. The existing suite of long-term projections, which typically run to the year 2099 or 2100, are insuffici...

Climate change continues to negatively affect the livelihoods, health, and cultural practices of Indigenous Peoples, as well as the ecological resilience of their territories. Self-determination is key to implementing effective resilience strategies that meet the needs of Indigenous communities. Indigenous Peoples are leading climate adaptation and...

The Fifth National Climate Assessment is the US Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. It is a congressionally mandated interagency effort that provides the scientific foundation to support informed decision-making across the United States.

Process appendix for NCA5

Appendix of NCA5

Appendix of NCA5

Key Points Despite improvements to better characterize risk in climate assessments, scientists' certainty in findings is often misinterpreted U.S. climate assessments often report high confidence and likelihood findings and rarely report low certainty, potentially severe impacts Alternative representations of calibrated language may alleviate confu...

Background: Increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) affect global nutrition via effects on agricultural productivity and nutrient content of food crops. We combined these effects with economic projections to estimate net changes in nutrient availability between 2010 and 2050. Methods: In this modelling study, we used the Inter...

The U.S. Southwest is projected to experience increasing aridity due to climate change. We quantify the resulting impacts on ambient dust levels and public health using methods consistent with the Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Change Impacts and Risk Analysis framework. We first demonstrate that U.S. Southwest fine (PM2.5) and coarse (P...

There is a growing capability to project the impacts and economic effects of climate change across multiple sectors. This information is needed to inform decisions regarding the diversity and magnitude of future climate impacts and explore how mitigation and adaptation actions might affect these risks. Here, we summarize results from sectoral impa...

Supporting Information S1

The changing risk of extreme precipitation is difficult to project. Events are rare by definition, and return periods of heavy precipitation events are often calculated assuming a stationary climate. Furthermore, ensembles of climate model projections are not large enough to fully categorize the tails of the distribution. To address this, we cluste...

Background: Ongoing climate change might, through rising temperatures, alter allergenic pollen biology across the northern hemisphere. We aimed to analyse trends in pollen seasonality and pollen load and to establish whether there are specific climate-related links to any observed changes. Methods: For this retrospective data analysis, we did an e...

Pollen is an important environmental cause of allergic asthma episodes. Prior work has established a proof of concept for assessing projected climate change impacts on future oak pollen exposure and associated health impacts. This paper uses additional monitor data and epidemiologic functions to extend prior analyses, reporting new estimates of the...

A comprehensive assessment of the impacts of climate change on human health in the United States concluded that climate change exacerbates existing climate-sensitive health threats and creates new challenges, exposing more people in more places to hazardous weather and climate conditions. This chapter builds on that assessment and considers the ext...

This appendix is an update to the frequently asked questions (FAQs) presented in the Third National Climate Assessment (NCA3). New questions based on areas of emerging scientific inquiry are included alongside updated responses to the FAQs from NCA3. The answers are based on the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s (USGCRP) sustained assessment pr...

The goal of this study is to reframe the analysis and discussion of extreme heat projections to improve communication of future extreme heat risks in the United States. We combine existing data from 31 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 models to examine future exposure to extreme heat for global average temperatures of 1.5, 2, 3,...

Supporting Information S1

[This corrects the article DOI: https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP2594.].

BACKGROUND: The public health community readily recognizes flooding and wildfires as climate-related health hazards, but few studies quantify changes in risk of exposure, particularly for vulnerable children and older adults. OBJECTIVES: This study quantifies future populations potentially exposed to inland flooding and wildfire smoke under two c...

Future climate change is expected to lengthen and intensify pollen seasons in the U.S., potentially increasing incidence of allergic asthma. We developed a proof-of-concept approach for estimating asthma emergency department (ED) visits in the U.S. associated with present-day and climate-induced changes in oak pollen. We estimated oak pollen season...

Background Future climate change is expected to lengthen and intensify pollen seasons in the USA, potentially increasing incidence of allergic asthma. We examined the health consequences of present day oak pollen levels and climate-induced changes in oak pollen on asthma emergency department visits in the USA. Methods We estimated oak pollen seaso...

Multiple studies have identified links between climate and West Nile virus disease since the virus arrived in North America. Here we sought to extend these results by developing a Health Impact Function (HIF) to generate county-level estimates of the expected annual number of West Nile neuroinvasive disease (WNND) cases based on the county’s histor...

The Earth's climate is changing. Temperatures are rising, snow and rainfall patterns are shifting, and more extreme climate events – like heavy rainstorms and record high temperatures – are already happening. Many of these observed changes are linked to the rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, caused by huma...

The United States (U.S.) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established voluntary programs to reduce methane (CH4) emissions, and regulations that either directly reduce CH4 or provide co-benefits of reducing CH4 emissions while controlling for other air pollutants. These programs and regulations address four sectors that are among the large...

Climate change threatens human health and well-being in the United States. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) Climate and Health Assessment has been developed to enhance understanding and inform decisions about this growing threat. This scientific assessment, called for under the President's Climate Action Plan, is a major report of t...

Vulnerability Varies Over Time and Is Place-Specific Key Finding 1: Across the United States, people and communities differ in their exposures, their inherent sensitivity, and their adaptive capacity to respond to and cope with climate change related health threats [Very High Confidence]. Vulnerability to climate change varies across time and locat...

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, higher temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and other climate change impacts have already begun to affect US agriculture and forestry, with impacts expected to become more substantial in the future. There have been numerous studies of climate change impacts on agriculture or forestry, but relat...

This paper develops and applies methods to quantify and monetize projected impacts on terrestrial ecosystem carbon storage and areas burned by wildfires in the contiguous United States under scenarios with and without global greenhouse gas mitigation. The MC1 dynamic global vegetation model is used to develop physical impact projections using three...

The Climate Change Impacts and Risk Analysis (CIRA) project quantifies the physical effects and economic damages under multiple climate change scenarios. This 2015 CIRA report, Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action, estimates the physical and monetary benefits to the U.S. of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The re...

This erratum article is part of a Special Issue on “A Multi-Model Framework to Achieve Consistent Evaluation of Climate Change Impacts in the United States” edited by Jeremy Martinich, John Reilly, Stephanie Waldhoff, Marcus Sarofim, and James McFarland.

The Earth's climate is changing. Temperatures are rising, snow and rainfall patterns are shifting, and more extreme climate events – like heavy rainstorms and record high temperatures – are already happening. Many of these observed changes are linked to the rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, caused by huma...

This paper provides the first quantitative synthesis of the rapidly growing literature on future tropical and extratropical cyclone damages under climate change. We estimate a probability distribution for the predicted impact of changes in global surface air temperatures on future storm damages, using an ensemble of 478 estimates of the temperature...

This article is part of a Special Issue on “A Multi-Model Framework to Achieve Consistent Evaluation of Climate Change Impacts in the United States” edited by Jeremy Martinich, John Reilly, Stephanie Waldhoff, Marcus Sarofim, and James McFarland. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-014-1206-0/fulltext.html

Background/Question/Methods One important way to track and communicate the causes and effects of climate change is through the use of indica­tors. An indicator, such as a record of Arctic sea ice extent, represents the state or trend of certain envi­ronmental conditions over a given area and a specified period of time. Environmental indicators ar...

The Earth's climate is changing. Temperatures are rising, snow and rainfall patterns are shifting, and more extreme climate events – like heavy rainstorms and record high temperatures – are already happening. Many of these observed changes are linked to the rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, caused by huma...

Deep-time palaeoclimate studies are vitally important for developing a complete understanding of climate responses to changes in the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (that is, the atmospheric partial pressure of CO(2), p(co(2))). Although past studies have explored these responses during portions of the Cenozoic era (the most recent 65.5 mi...

MYTHv.FACT Before we can embrace appropriate energy policies, we have to face the hard truths about the technologies available to us. John Reilly is a senior lecturer at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Allison C...

John Reilly and Allison Crimmins explain how countries worldwide have to face the hard truths about the technologies available to them before they can embrace appropriate energy policies. Economics will play a deciding role in what unfolds. For alternative technologies to be chosen among the mix of energy sources, they must be able to compete in th...

The Earth's climate is changing. Temperatures are rising, snow and rainfall patterns are shifting, and more extreme climate events – like heavy rainstorms and record high temperatures – are already happening. Many of these observed changes are linked to the rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, caused by huma...

A multi-proxy study was conducted in Monterey Bay, CA that has allowed the reconstruction of a continuous, high-resolution record of marine hemipelagic sedimentation spanning from the Last Glacial Interval (~32ka) through the Late Holocene (~1.5ka). Three sediment cores collected from the Monterey Bay slope were analyzed. Radiocarbon data reveal va...

A multi-proxy study was conducted in Monterey Bay, CA that has allowed the reconstruction of a continuous, high-resolution record of marine hemi-pelagic sedimentation spanning from the Last Glacial Interval (~32ka) through the Late Holocene (~1.5ka). Two piston cores, OO-99-10 and OO-99-12, and one gravity core, GC-3, from the Monterey Bay slope be...