NASA has released an updated Climate Adaption Plan, which it says will help make federal agencies more resilient to climate change impacts.
The update, released on June 20, 2024, involved more than 20 agencies and builds on the National Climate Resilience Framework, which helps align climate resilience investments across the public and private sectors through common principles and opportunities.
“NASA’s decades of Earth observation are key to building climate resiliency and sustainability across the country and the world,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. NASA provides researchers with crucial data from its satellites and other assets, as well as other observations and research on the climate system. The agency also works to apply that knowledge and inform the public about climate change.
Climate variability and change also have potential impacts on NASA’s ability to fulfill its mission, requiring proactive planning and action.
At the beginning of the current administration, President Biden tasked federal agencies with leading whole-of-government efforts to address climate change through Executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.
NASA released its initial Climate Adaptation Plan in 2021 and subsequent progress reports outlining advancements toward achieving its adaptation goals in 2022. In coordination with the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget, agencies updated their Climate Adaptation Plans for 2024 to 2027 to better integrate climate risk across their mission, operations, and asset management, including:
Combining historical data and projections to assess exposure of assets to climate-related hazards, including extreme heat and precipitation, sea level rise, flooding, and wildfire;
- Expanding the operational focus on managing climate risk to facilities and supply chains to include federal employees and federal lands and waters;
- Broadening the mission focus to describe mainstreaming adaptation into agency policies, programs, planning, budget formulation, and external funding;
- Linking climate adaptation actions with other Biden-Harris Administration priorities, including advancing environmental justice and the President’s Justice40 Initiative, strengthening engagement with Tribal Nations, supporting the America the Beautiful initiative, scaling up nature-based solutions, and addressing the causes of climate change through climate mitigation; and
- Adopting common progress indicators across agencies to assess the progress of agency climate adaptation efforts.
NASA says it will continue to prioritise the efforts and maintain an open information policy that makes its science data, software, and research freely available to all.
