Research to Confront Climate Change Complexity: Intersectionality, Integration, and Innovative Governance.

Climate impacts increasingly unfold in interlinked systems of people, nature, and infrastructure. The cascading consequences are revealing sometimes surprising connections across sectors and regions, and prospects for climate responses also depend on complex, difficult-to-understand interactions. In this commentary, we build on the innovations of the United States Fifth National Climate Assessment to suggest a framework for understanding and responding to complex climate challenges.

Risk screening methods for extreme heat: Implications for equity-oriented adaptation.

Morbidity and mortality impacts of extreme heat amplified by climate change will be unequally distributed among communities given pre-existing differences in socioeconomic, health, and environmental conditions. Many governments are interested in adaptation policies that target those especially vulnerable to the risks, but there are important questions about how to effectively identify and support communities most in need of heat adaptations. Here, we use an equity-oriented adaptation program from the state of California as a case study to evaluate the implications of the currently used environmental justice index (CalEnviroScreen 3.