Speaker: Liz Payton, water resources specialist, Western Water Assessment, CIRES, CU Boulder
Title: The Fifth National Climate Assessment Water Chapter

Abstract
The National Climate Assessment is a congressionally mandated report that summarizes the current and future impacts of climate change. The water chapter of the Fifth National Climate Assessment describes how a changing climate profoundly affects the water cycle and hence human society. Climate change is intensifying rainfall and floods, deepening droughts and shifting weather patterns across the globe, threatening terrestrial freshwater supplies and degrading water quality for people and ecosystems. Snowpack timing and volumes, key to water supplies in the American West, are changing in dramatic ways. These water cycle changes affect all communities, but the impacts are not experienced equally. The chapter describes how and why advances and challenges in adaptation are uneven across the U.S.