Breakout Session IV: Applying Remote Sensing Observations to Impacts Assessment IPCC WG 2 Report (2008) Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Characterizes current knowledge, perspectives, and future needs. IPCC assessments rely on scenarios based on 3 axes; two spatial and one cross-scale economic: Global Regional Economic Factors: Climate Scenarios; non-climate drivers (socio-economic driven changes in land use and resource use), mitigation and stabilization, Abrupt climate change. Sectors: Freshwater; Ecosystems; Food, Fiber, & Forest Products; Coastal Systems and Low Lying Areas; Industry, Settlement & Society; and Public Health

Breakout Session IV: Applying Remote Sensing Observations to Impacts Assessment IPCC WG2 Future Research Needs – Climate Modeling that elucidates the nature of future changes at regional scale. Especially precipitation, hydrological consequences. – Understanding regional effects of abrupt climate change events. – Monitoring: Long-term field data collection on managed and un-managed systems and human activities. (Can remote sensing data augment this activity?) – Ability to integrate multiple stressors for vulnerability assessment. – Adaptation to environmental changes – Costs of adaptation/mitigation

Breakout Session IV: Applying Remote Sensing Observations to Impact Assessment Remotely sensed observations should support efforts that bridge global and regional scales – Climate modeling – regional manifestation of changes – Abrupt climate change scenarios – regional manifestations. – Long-term field data collection that includes managed and un-managed systems and human activities.

Breakout Session IV: Applying Remote Sensing Observations to Impacts Assessment Current missions provide a wide range of relevant data. – Research should be steered to use these data in relevant regional scale modeling efforts. – Spatial resolution: Are multi-kilometer scale, 1km, 500m, 250m resolutions adequate? – Cross-platform data integration needed (including non-NASA data) to link processes. What platforms/sensors should be grouped?

Questions to be addressed  What research can we conduct to better address the impacts and consequences of global change?  What actions would be most useful to or supportive of future assessments?  What are the greatest challenges and opportunities relevant to the use of remote sensing data for impacts assessment?

Breakout Session IV: Applying Remote Sensing Observations to Impacts Assessment Current NASA Missions – Terra – Aqua – Aura – TRMM – ICESAT – QUICKSCAT – Calipso – Cloudsat – GRACE – JASON – EO-1

Breakout Session IV: Applying Remote Sensing Observations to Impacts Assessment Planned Missions: – NPP/NPOESS – SMAP – OCO – Landsat – ACE – AQUARIUS – GLORY – ICESAT