Page:Final Draft of the 2017 Climate Science Special Report.pdf/8

 CSSR 5OD: FINAL CLEARANCE

Front Matter

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Guide to the Report

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The following subsections describe the format of the Climate Science Special Report and the overall structure and features of the chapters.

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Executive Summary

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The Executive Summary describes the major findings from the Climate Science Special Report. It summarizes the overall findings and includes some key figures and additional bullet points covering overarching and especially noteworthy conclusions. The Executive Summary and the majority of the Key Findings are written to be accessible to a wide range of audiences.

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Chapters

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Key Findings and Traceable Accounts

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Each topical chapter includes Key Findings, which are based on the authors’ expert judgment of the synthesis of the assessed literature. Each Key Finding includes a confidence statement and, as appropriate, framing of key scientific uncertainties, so as to better support assessment of climaterelated risks. (See “Documenting Uncertainty” below).

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Each Key Finding is also accompanied by a Traceable Account that documents the supporting evidence, process, and rationale the authors used in reaching these conclusions and provides additional information on sources of uncertainty through confidence and likelihood statements. The Traceable Accounts can be found at the end of each chapter.

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Regional Analyses

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Throughout the report, the regional analyses of climate changes for the United States are based on 10 different regions as shown in Figure 1. There are differences from the regions used in the Third National Climate Assessment (Melillo et al. 2014): 1) the Great Plains are split into the Northern Great Plains and Southern Great Plains; and 2) The U.S. islands in the Caribbean are analyzed as a separate region apart from the Southeast.

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Chapter Text

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Each chapter assesses the state of the science for a particular aspect of the changing climate. The first chapter gives a summary of the global changes occurring in the Earth’s climate system. This is followed in Chapter 2 by a summary of the scientific basis for climate change. Chapter 3 gives an overview of the processes used in the detection and attribution of climate change and associated studies using those techniques. Chapter 4 then discusses the scenarios for greenhouse gases and particles and the modeling tools used to study future projections. Chapters 5 through 9 primarily focus on physical changes in climate occurring in the United States, including those projected to occur in the future. Chapter 10 provides a focus on land use change and associated Subject to Final Copyedit

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28 June 2017