What Is the NCA Report?

Written By Teacher: Liz Ransom

As a High School Spanish teacher and student newspaper advisor, Liz has taught for over 20 years and has served as World Languages Department Chair and K-6 summer camp activities leader. She has worked in Ohio, Maine, New Jersey, Maryland, and Chile.

Teach students to use data to evaluate climate change policies by exploring facts from the National Climate Assessment. This resource provides lots of different ways for students to understand the local impacts and potential solutions for climate change. Social studies, civics, science, and ELA classes can use the NCA in conjunction with this lesson on US elections to analyze candidates’ climate positions, or the effectiveness of local ballot initiatives. For a wider lens, students can use the NCA data to decide if climate change meets the proposed definition of ecocide with this history unit.

Written By: MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative

The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program, a part of MIT Climate HQ, provides the public with nonpartisan, easy-to-understand, and scientifically-grounded information on climate change and its solutions.

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is the U.S. government’s preeminent report on climate change in the United States. It is produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), a federal program of 15 agencies charged with delivering a quadrennial assessment that a) integrates, evaluates, and interprets the findings of the Program and discusses the scientific uncertainties associated with such findings; b) analyzes the effects of global change on eight specific sectors; and c) analyzes current trends in global change, both human-caused and natural, and projects major trends for the next 25 to 100 years.

Five NCAs have been produced since 2001, and the structure and development of each has evolved over time to reflect feedback from the federal agencies and the public.

What's in the Fifth National Climate Assessment?

The most recent assessment, NCA5, was released in 2023. The report lays out the basic science of climate change, examines how climate change will affect 17 national-level topics, and includes 10 regional chapters covering the entire United States. The report also dedicates two chapters to climate change response through adaptation and mitigation, as well as five focus boxes on cross-cutting issues, including COVID-19, supply chains, blue carbon, compound events, and western wildfire. The NCA gives close attention to current and future risks, how those risks can be reduced, and implications for society under different future scenarios. It draws on the downscaled data made available in the NCA Atlas, which lets Americans explore the impacts of climate change in their own backyards.