IPCC Releases Fifth Assessment Report; LCC Uses New Scenarios for Regional Assessments

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the first of three volumes of its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) providing a broad assessment of what is understood about various aspects of climate change and its impacts.

The IPCC assessment says it is "extremely likely" that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. The evidence for this has grown thanks to more and better observations, an improved understanding of the climate system response and improved climate models. 

The new climate scenarios termed Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) that are part of the Fifth Assessment are being used for downscaled climate models for the Northeast Region by the University of Massachusetts as part of the LCC Designing Sustainable Landscapes project to project how the changing climate is likely to affect species, habitats and ecosystems.

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