Climate Adaptation Science Investigators (CASI)
The changing climate is increasing risks to NASA Centers. The goal of the Climate Adaptation Science Investigators Workgroup (CASI) is to provide the latest scientific research on climate change that will help NASA facilities managers adapt to increasing climate risks in timely and effective ways. The CASI initiative is a partnership between NASA's Earth Science Division and Office of Strategic Infrastructure (OSI) geared towards enhancing climate resilience at NASA facilities. NASA centers are vulnerable to climate hazards that increase risks to operations, assets, and employee health, which require resilient solutions tailored to specific needs. The Climate Adaptation Science Investigators Workgroup builds on the first CASI activity, which was established in 2009 (Rosenzweig et al., 2011).
CASI provides NASA's managers with immediate access to climate and impacts science relevant to their Centers and regions. CASI's partnership of scientists with institutional managers brings together NASA's Earth science expertise and its culture of risk management attained through years of experience in space flight and other core missions. Through CASI, NASA scientists learn how their research interacts with decision-making, which then feeds back on their work and leads to an improved foundation for risk management and climate adaptation across the Agency.
For each NASA facility, CASI develops co-produced hazard-based climate projections, tools, and products based on the latest science. This ensures that Center managers are equipped with accurate risk information for decision-making. CASI workgroups are composed of both scientists and managers focusing on Temperature and Precipitation Extreme Weather Events, Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding, Fires and Air Quality, Water, Energy, and Ecosystems. In addition to directly supporting resilience decisions, CASI contributes to risk assessments, advances climate literacy at NASA, and fosters community engagement.
Climate risk projections by CASI workgroups may be viewed on the NASA Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) website.
Projected change in U.S. temperatures in the 2050s from a baseline period (1981-2020) under a medium emissions scenario (SSP 2-4.5)
Guidelines for Use of Products
The CASI projections are useful for scenario planning and development of both short-term and long-term resilience decisions. The projections represent possible climate futures with explicit characterization of levels of uncertainty using state-of-the-art climate models and multiple scenarios of future greenhouse gas concentrations, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC AR6) and recent peer-reviewed literature.
Uncertainties in future policy choices, technology change, and other unknown factors will influence future climate pathways at NASA Centers. Like all projections, the CASI climate projections have uncertainty embedded within them. Sources of uncertainty include data and modeling constraints, the random nature of some parts of the climate system, and limited understanding of some physical processes. Thus, the projections are not true probabilities and the potential for error should be acknowledged.
Contact
Please address all inquiries about the Climate Adaptation Science Investigators Workgroup to Dr. Cynthia Rosezweig and to Nick Pelaccio.
CASI Workgroups
Definition of Terms
CMIP6 — The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 is the latest generation of global climate models.
Global Climate Models — GCMs are numerical models representing physical processes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land surface, and are the most advanced tools currently available for simulating the response of the global climate system to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.
Shared Socioeconomic Pathways — SSPs were developed as a joint community effort (by an international team of climate scientists, economists and energy systems modelers) to provide a toolkit for the climate change research community to carry out integrated, multi-disciplinary analysis. They describe plausible major global developments that together would lead in the future to different challenges for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, aiming to explore how the future can evolve under a consistent set of assumptions. The SSPs are based on five narratives describing alternative socio-economic developments, including sustainable development, regional rivalry, inequality, fossil-fueled development, and middle-of-the-road development (Riahi et al., 2017).
Representative Concentration Pathways — RCPs are scenarios that include time series of emissions and concentrations of the full suite of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) and aerosols and chemically active gases, as well as land use/land cover. The word “representative” signifies that each RCP provides only one of many possible scenarios that would lead to the specific radiative forcing characteristics. The term “pathway” emphasizes that not only the long-term concentration levels are of interest, but also the trajectory taken over time to reach that outcome (Moss et al., 2010).
Emission scenarios — CASI considers low, intermediate and high emissions scenarios, corresponding to SSP1-2.6 (that is a combination of SSP 1 and RCP 2.6), SSP2-4.5 and SSP3-7.0.
References
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report. Weblink, last accessed Oct. 3, 2024.
Moss, R.H., et al., 2010: The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment. Nature, 463, 747-756, doi:10.1038/nature08823.
Riahi, K., 2017: The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview. Glob. Environ. Change, 42, 153-168, doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.05.009.
Rosenzweig, C., R. Horton, I.S. Higuchi, C. Hudson, and Climate Adaptation Science Investigator Work Group, 2011: NASA’s CASI: Building climate-resilient NASA centers. Posted on livebetter, Dec. 2, 2011. Weblink, last accesssed Oct. 3, 2024.
Rosenzweig, C., R.M. Horton, D.A. Bader, M.E. Brown, R. DeYoung, O. Dominguez, M. Fellows, L. Friedl, W. Graham, C. Hall, S. Higuchi, L. Iraci, G. Jedlovec, J. Kaye, M. Loewenstein, T. Mace, C. Milesi, W. Patzert, P.W. Stackhouse, and K. Toufectis, 2014: Enhancing climate resilience at NASA centers: A collaboration between science and stewardship. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., 95, no. 9, 1351-1363, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00169.1.
