Climate Change Overview

The Climate Challenge

The Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest regions of the United States encompass enormous diversity in geography, climate, ecosystems, and human land use. This area contains 30 states, multiple ecoregions, 9 of the 21 regions established for the Landscape Conservation Cooperative Network, and a human population of more than 209,000,000 (63% of the U.S. population). Consequently, this area poses many unique challenges for understanding, adapting to, and mitigating the effects of climate change.

Key Climate Change Messages

The Fifth National Climate Assessment (2023) is the US Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses. It is a congressionally mandated interagency effort that provides the scientific foundation to support informed decision-making across the United States. Key messages for Tribes and Indigenous Peoples as well as the Northeast, Southeast, and Midwest regions are presented below. Click on the boxes to see each key message in its entirety.

Tribes and Indigenous Peoples Key Messages

Climate change continues to negatively affect the livelihoods, health, and cultural practices of Indigenous Peoples, as well as the ecological resilience of their territories. Self-determination is key to implementing effective resilience strategies that meet the needs of Indigenous communities. Indigenous Peoples are leading climate adaptation and mitigation actions guided by Indigenous Knowledge and values.

  • Climate change continues to cause negative effects on critical aspects of Indigenous Peoples’ well-being, including their livelihoods, health, nutrition, and cultural practices, as well as the ecological resilience of their territories. Indigenous Peoples are responding in diverse ways, including through energy sovereignty.

  • By exercising their right to self-determination, Indigenous Peoples can respond to climate change in ways that meet the needs and aspirations of their communities. However, their ability to exercise this right is often undermined by institutions and policies shaped by the impacts of settler colonialism. Expanded support from federal and state governments has the potential to uphold Indigenous rights to self-determination for guiding climate resilience.

  • Indigenous Peoples lead numerous actions that respond to climate change. Indigenous-led organizations, initiatives, and movements have demonstrated diverse strategies for climate adaptation and mitigation that are guided by Indigenous Knowledges and values and by the pursuit of Indigenous rights.

Northeast Key Messages

In the Northeast, extreme weather events and other climate-driven changes are shaping mitigation and adaptation efforts, for things like coastal wetland restoration and changes in fishing behavior. Many climate impacts in the region have disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and communities of color. Cities and states are implementing climate action plans with innovative approaches that embrace inclusive and equitable processes.

  • The Northeast continues to be confronted with extreme weather, most notably extreme precipitation—which has caused problematic flooding across the region—and heatwaves. In response, climate adaptation and mitigation efforts, including nature-based solutions, have increased across the region, with a focus on emissions reductions, carbon sequestration, and resilience building.

  • The ocean and coastal habitats in the Northeast are experiencing changes that are unprecedented in recorded history, including ocean warming, marine heatwaves, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. Changing ocean conditions are causing significant shifts in the distribution, productivity, and seasonal timing of life-cycle events of living marine resources in the Northeast. These impacts have spurred adaptation efforts such as coastal wetland restoration and changes in fishing behavior.

  • Extreme heat, storms, flooding, and other climate-related hazards are causing disproportionate impacts among certain communities in the Northeast, notably including racial and ethnic minorities, people of lower socioeconomic status, and older adults. These communities tend to have less access to healthcare, social services, and financial resources and to face higher burdens related to environmental pollution and preexisting health conditions. Social equity objectives are prominent in many local-level adaptation initiatives, but the amount of progress toward equitable outcomes remains uneven.

  • In recent years, there have been substantial advances in the magnitude and scope of climate action across all jurisdictional scales. Almost every state in the region has conducted or updated a climate impact assessment, developed a comprehensive climate action plan, and enacted climate-related laws since 2018. Innovative approaches to transparent, inclusive, and equitable processes around climate action are being embraced by Tribes, municipalities, and states. Although ambitious emissions reduction targets have been put forward, meeting these goals is expected to be challenging.

  • Options for financing mitigation and adaptation efforts have expanded in recent years, providing households, communities, and businesses with more options for responding to climate change. Flood insurance allows individuals and communities to recover following extreme flooding events, but many at-risk homeowners lack adequate coverage. Although the public sector remains the primary source of funding for adaptation, private capital has started to invest in a variety of mitigation and adaptation projects, including services for monitoring climate risks and community-based catastrophe insurance.

Southeast Key Messages

The Southeast’s growing population faces increasing threats from climate change, with impacts on human health, ecosystems, economies, infrastructure, and food systems. While there have been notable advancements in adaptation throughout the region, these efforts tend to be concentrated in wealthier coastal and metropolitan areas, leaving rural and other under-resourced communities at risk. Coordinated climate strategies could improve equity, well-being, and economic vitality.

  • The Southeast’s population has grown and is expected to continue growing, mostly in metropolitan areas and along its coastline, putting more communities and their assets into harm’s way from increasing risks related to climate and land-use changes. Conversely, many rural places are facing declining populations with a growing percentage of older residents, making these areas particularly vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate. At the same time, decision-makers frequently use outdated and/or limited information on climate-related risks to inform adaptation plans, which as a result fail to account for worsening future conditions. These climate adaptation efforts also tend to be concentrated in wealthier communities, leaving under-resourced and more rural populations, communities of color, and Tribal Nations at growing and disproportionate risk.

  • Human health and climate stressors are intimately linked in the Southeast. Community characteristics such as racial and ethnic population, chronic disease prevalence, age, and socioeconomic status can influence how climate change exacerbates, ameliorates, or introduces new health issues. Climate change is already impacting health in the region. There are effective strategies to address the health impacts of climate change in the Southeast that have multiple benefits across social and environmental contexts.

  • Over the last few decades, economic growth in the Southeast has been concentrated in and around urban centers that depend on climate-sensitive infrastructure and regional connections to thrive. Simultaneously, rural and place-based economies that rely on the region’s ecosystems are particularly at risk from current and future climate changes. Global warming is expected to worsen climate-related impacts on economic systems, labor, and regional supply chains in the Southeast, with disproportionate effects on frontline communities. A coordinated approach that recognizes present-day inequities and the interdependencies between rural and urban communities will be necessary to secure the region’s economic vitality.

  • Changes in temperature, drought, extreme rainfall, and sea levels are already threatening the Southeast’s agriculture and other food-related systems. Moreover, these climate-related hazards are expected to worsen with every increment of global warming, disproportionately harm farmers and small-scale operations, and increase the competition between urban and rural communities for valuable resources such as water and land. However, innovative agricultural techniques such as precision farming show promise for adapting to future climate changes in the region.

Midwest Key Messages

Rising temperatures, extreme precipitation, drought, and other climate-related events in the Midwest are impacting agriculture, ecosystems, cultural practices, health, infrastructure, and waterways. Communities, Indigenous Peoples, governments, and businesses are embracing adaptation approaches that include climate-smart agriculture, improved landscape management, innovative green infrastructure financing, and collaborative decision-making.

  • Crop production is projected to change in complex ways due to increasing extreme precipitation events and transitions between wet and dry conditions, as well as intensification of crop water loss. Changes in precipitation extremes, timing of snowmelt, and early-spring rainfall are expected to pose greater challenges for crop and animal agriculture, including increased pest and disease transmission, muddier pastures, and further degradation of water quality. Climate-smart agriculture and other adaptation techniques provide a potential path toward environmental and economic sustainability.

  • Ecosystems are already being affected by changes in extreme weather and other climate-related changes, with negative impacts on a wide range of species. Increasing incidence of flooding and drought is expected to further alter aquatic ecosystems, while terrestrial ecosystems are being reshaped by rising temperatures and decreasing snow and ice cover. Loss of ecosystem services is undermining human well-being, causing the loss of economic, cultural, and health benefits. In response, communities are adapting their cultural practices and the ways they manage the landscape, preserving and protecting ecosystems and the services they provide.

  • Climate change has wide-ranging effects on lives and livelihoods, healthcare systems, and community cohesion. These diverse impacts will require integrated, innovative response from collaborations between public health and other sectors, such as emergency management, agriculture, and urban planning. Because of historical and systemic biases, communities of color are especially vulnerable to these negative impacts. Mitigation and adaptation strategies, such as expanded use of green infrastructure, heat-health early warning systems, and improved stormwater management systems, when developed in collaboration with affected communities, have the potential to improve individual and community health.

  • Increases in temperatures and extreme precipitation events are already challenging aging infrastructure and are expected to impair surface transportation, water navigation, and the electrical grid. Shifts in the timing and intensity of rainfall are expected to disrupt transportation along major rivers and increase chronic flooding. Green infrastructure and public and private investments may mitigate losses, provide relief from heat, and offer other ways to adapt the built environment to a changing climate.

  • Climate-related changes to water quantity and quality are increasing the risks to ecosystem health, adequate food production, surface water and groundwater uses, and recreation. Projected increases in droughts, floods, and runoff events across the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes will adversely impact ecosystems through increased erosion, harmful algal blooms, and expansion of invasive species. Federal and state agencies and nongovernmental organizations are cooperating on adaptation efforts related to streamflow, water quality, and other water issues.