Workshop report - Bridging the Climate Information held at Argonne National Laboratory September 29, 1999

In a recent report entitled The Regional Impacts of Climate Change it was concluded that the technological capacity to adapt to climate change is likely to be readily available in North America, but its application will be realized only if the necessary information is available (sufficiently far in advance in relation to the planning horizons and lifetimes of investments) and the institutional and financial capacity to manage change exists. The report also acknowledged that one of the key factors that limit the ability to understand the vulnerability of subregions of North America to climate change, and to develop and implement adaptive strategies to reduce that vulnerability, is the lack of accurate regional projections of climate change, including extreme events. In particular, scientists need to account for the physical-geographic characteristics (e.g., the Great Lakes, coastlines, and mountain ranges) that play a significant role in the North America climate and also need to consider the feedback between the biosphere and atmosphere