The Fourth National Climate Assessment outlined the potential impacts of climate change across 12 aspects of American society.

The 12 aspects covered in the report were: communities, economy, interconnected impacts, actions to reduce risks, water, health, indigenous peoples, ecosystems and ecosystem services, agriculture, infrastructure, oceans & coasts, and tourism / recreation.

In summary, the report outlined many hardships happening currently and several more down the road due to global warming.

Such as damage to infrastructure from wildfires, negative effect on trade and economy from high temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions not being reduced enough to offset damage, increased exposure to waterborne and food borne diseases, ecosystems drastically altered such as coral reef and sea ice.

“With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century – more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many US states,” the report says.

“Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts, climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.”

But it says that projections of future catastrophe could change if society works to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and “to adapt to the changes that will occur”.