How to Adapt to a Changing Climate

Expert panel examines strategies and tools for adapting to current and future climate change-driven challenges.

Communities across the United States already are responding to the effects of a changing climate from drought in the West to rising seas in the coastal south. Experts from the World Wildlife Fund and Stanford University gathered in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 30 to discuss environmentally and economically efficient ways to build and protect communities facing such challenges. 

Stanford research shed light on questions such as how to best plan for what we know about future climate conditions and impacts in the U.S. and where the most dramatic changes are predicted to occur. The panelists emphasized the advantages of working toward resilient adaptation can also apply to non-climate-related community stressors such as terrorist attacks, earthquakes, volcanic explosions or other unpredictable events.

Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences was the keynote speaker. Chris Field, Perry L. McCarty Director and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy, moderated. Panelists included Katharine Mach, Senior Research Scientist at the Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and Visiting Investigator at the Carnegie Institution for Science; Noah Diffenbaugh, Professor in the Stanford School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences and Senior Fellow at Woods; and Carter Roberts, President and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund of the United States.

The panel was part of the Stanford Environment & Energy Panel Series, highlighting pressing environmental and energy challenges President Trump will need to confront. The first panel in the series focused on the intersection of food, water, energy and national security. The second focused on clean energy research and development for a low-carbon future.

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