Climate Adaptation

Human actions are significantly impacting Earth's environment. Scientists have strengthened their ability to attribute certain changes, especially related to sea-level rise and extreme weather events, to global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The effects of climate change are more obviously beginning to influence communities around the world, and are expected to generate even more challenging consequences in the future. Even as governments and industry must work rapidly to cut emissions to prevent the worst effects of a warming climate, communities must also take actions now to begin adapting to the new realities that global warming will certainly bring. This is particularly urgent for people living in areas historically subject to extreme heat, semi-arid zones, coastal areas, small island nations, or communities that live in or near the Arctic Circle.

Our faculty and researchers deploy their expertise in natural sciences, engineering, and economics to model how global warming will influence sea level rise, coastal flooding, hurricanes, heat waves, and droughts, and the communities who experience them.

From a policy perspective, our researchers recommend policies and actions to both lessen climate change risks and also prepare for the impact that an already warming climate is having on communities.

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Dec. 21, 2022
Author
Written by Keely Swan, Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment

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Compounding Climate and Social Hazards Result in Different Migration Patterns around the World
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Author
Written by Hannah Reynolds/Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment

Extreme drought related to climate change holds serious consequences for vulnerable communities, especially those who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. When droughts become sustained, additional climate disasters hit, and/or existing social vulnerabilities exacerbate the impacts of drought – also known as compound events – a population…

Michael Oppenheimer Writes Chapter in Greta Thunberg’s New Book
Nov. 16, 2022
Author
Written by Molly Seltzer, Office of Communications
Princeton climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer first came to the attention of climate activist Greta Thunberg in 2019, the year of the children’s strike that made the Swedish teenager a household name across the globe.

Thunberg’s team reached out to him after the release of an influential report on the world’s oceans that Oppenheimer…

COP27: Princeton Student Blog
Nov. 8, 2022
The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) is taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt from November 6-18, 2022. This year, Princeton is sending a delegation of graduate students, researchers, and faculty to attend the proceedings. 

At…

Blog: Recapping the Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB56)
July 13, 2022
Author
Written by Lisa Thalheimer, C-PREE Postdoctoral Research Associate

From 6 to 16 June 2022, the Bonn Climate Change Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in Bonn, Germany. This smaller and more technical pre-conference — officially the fifty-sixth session meeting of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation …

Related People

Allan Hsiao
Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Affairs
Ning Lin
Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Joseph Lockwood
HMEI-STEP Fellow 2022
Paul Nix
STEP Ph.D. Student
Guy Nordenson
Professor of Architecture
Michael Oppenheimer
Director of the Center for Policy Research on Energy and Environment
Anu Ramaswami
Sanjay Swani '87 Professor of India Studies. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, PIIRS, and HMEI
Melissa O. Tier
STEP Ph.D. Student
Rachel Young
STEP Ph.D. Student