Climate change is not just a myth — it’s happening right now in the United States, according to a global climate change report that an ASU professor helped author.

Nancy Grimm, a life sciences and sustainability professor and the lead principal investigator and co-director of the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research project, contributed to the section on society, water and the Southwest in the “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” report.

The report is supported by the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
“It’s a federal advisory committee,” Grimm said. “All of the authors read and contribute to the entire report.”

She said the report focuses on climate change in the United States, whereas previous reports have focused on the world in general.

“It’s a synthesis of the latest and best scientific knowledge of the impact of climate change,” Grimm said.

She said the report is written in a way that everyone can understand.
“It’s intended to provide a good resource for decision makers at all levels,” Grimm said.

Overall, there are some serious predictions for the future.

“We see that climate change is happening now and that it’s happening at a very rapid rate,” Grimm said.

Although the report is focused primarily on changes that have already happened, there are some solutions for the problem.

Two solutions are to figure out how to reduce the emissions of green house gases and to attempt to cope and adapt to the change that is already happening, she said.

“Something has to be done now and on multiple fronts,” Grimm said.
According to the report, there are 10 key findings.

These include that “global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced,” “climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow,” “widespread climate-related impacts are occurring now and expected to increase,” “climate change will stress water resources” and “risks to human health will increase.”

Andrew Latimer, a mechanical engineering and sustainability sophomore, said he thinks there has been some global climate change.

“I think more than anything it’s changed the social climate,” Latimer said. “It’s definitely gotten a lot of people thinking about their actions.”

He said that as an engineering and sustainability major, he hopes to focus on reducing some causes and effects of climate change.

“I think that it’s probably one of the most important things I could do,” Latimer said.

He added that the public needs to be more informed about sustainable practices.

“On the back end, most people don’t really know where their energy comes from and they don’t really care,” Latimer said.

Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu.