An incredible coincidence of timing witnessed the National Research Council (NRC) release its latest report on climate change days after Hurricane Sandy devastated the shorelines of New Jersey, New York, and New England and seriously impacted major urban areas around the city of New York. The report, Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis, concludes that “Climate change can reasonably be expected to increase the frequency and intensity of a variety of potentially disruptive environmental events-slowly at first, but then more quickly.”  Further, the report also concludes that, “Over the coming decade, some climate-related events will produce consequences that exceed the capacity of affected societies or global systems to manage: these may have global security implications.”

While the NRC report is focused on events outside the United States, the impact of Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent northeast coastal storm that followed Sandy adds increasing emphasis to the report’s recommendations for “a range of research and policy actions to create a whole-of-government approach to increasing understanding of complex and contingent connections between climate and security, and to inform choices about adapting to and reducing vulnerability to climate change.”