Climate Change and Cities: Second Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network

Climate Change and Cities bridges science-to-action for climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts in cities around the world.

Cynthia Rosenzweig is a Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where she heads the Climate Impacts Group. She is Co-Chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the mayor to advise the city on adaptation for its critical infrastructure. She co-led the Metropolitan East Coast Regional Assessment of the US National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, sponsored by the US Global Change Research Program. Rosenzweig was a Coordinating Lead Author of Working Group II for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is Co-Director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) and Co-Editor of the First UCCRN Assessment Report on Climate Change and Cities (ARC3), the first ever global, interdisciplinary, cross-regional, science-based assessment to address climate risks, adaptation, mitigation, and policy mechanisms relevant to cities. She is the founder of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), a major international collaborative effort to assess the state of global agricultural modeling, understand climate impacts on the agricultural sector, and enhance adaptation capacity, as it pertains to food security, in developing and developed countries. She was named as one of 'Nature's 10: Ten People Who Mattered in 2012' by the journal Nature. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she joins impact models with climate models to project future outcomes of both land-based and urban systems under altered climate conditions. She is a Professor at Barnard College, New York and a Senior Research Scientist at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York.

William D. Solecki is a Professor in the Department of Geography, Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). He has led or co-led numerous projects on the process of urban environmental change and transformation. As Director of the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, he has worked extensively on connecting cutting-edge urban environmental science to everyday practice and action in cities. He most recently served as Co-Chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, as Co-Principal Investigator of the Integrated Assessment for Effective Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in New York State (ClimAID), and as Co-Leader of the Metropolitan East Coast Assessment of the US National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. He is a Lead Author of the IPCC Working Group II Fifth Assessment Report. He is also a member of International Geographical Union (IGU) Megacity Study Group and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change core project of the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP).

Patricia Romero-Lankao is Deputy Director of the Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, part of the Mexico branch of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her research examines the interactions of urban development with global climate change, including carbon and water cycles, the drivers of energy use in cities, societal factors that underpin the vulnerability of cities to heat waves and air pollution, and how urban settings can be made more resilient to these and other stresses. She coordinated peer review for the 2009 Panel report Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production: Priority Products and Materials. Romero-Lankao also served on the scientific committee of the Global Carbon Project and was lead author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.