Research Roadmap Poses Climate Change Questions For Scientists, Public

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A coalition from across the state has developed a roadmap for researchers and others interested in climate change. / Georgia Climate Project

A coalition from across the state has put together what they’re calling the Georgia Climate Research Roadmap: a list of 40 questions on how climate change will affect the state and how to respond.

Patricia Yager of the University of Georgia is on the steering committee that developed the list. GPB’s Emily Jones reports.UGA's Patricia Yager discusses the Georgia Climate Research Roadmap

Some interview highlights

On the wide range of research questions:

"Anyone who lives on the planet, or who lives in Georgia, is going to feel the changes that climate is bringing to them. We can go inside of our air-conditioned buildings sometimes, but we still have to live here. And so knowing how the climate affects you in all these different realms is important."

On researching both impacts and solutions:

"Some of us are still holding out hope that we're going to be able to slow this down and in fact maybe even stop it in our lifetimes. But others are more pragmatic, and I am now finding myself more and more in the pragmatic group, which is that we're gonna have to learn to adapt. And so we want to be pushing on both fronts. We want to be pushing on understanding how climate is going to continue to change and how it's gonna impact, but we also need to start thinking about, 'what do we do about it?'"

On making the paper accessible to the public:

"This document is public access; anyone can go online and read it. But then also, we're putting on a website...you can see a two-page summary and then it's also broken down where you can start to probe into the particular topics. So if you're interested in agriculture, for example, you can go to the agriculture subgroup of questions - which is only five - and see what are the main issues for agriculture."