The National Adaptation Forum represents a collective effort to enhance the resilience of communities, natural resources, and economies in the face of a changing climate. Throughout its history, it has consistently highlighted research and strategies at the intersection of adaptation and extreme weather. Through its programming and networking opportunities, the Forum explicitly advances awareness of climate-amplified extreme weather and innovation within climate-related emergency management.

The Forum’s broad reach allows for a national conversation with influential participants. At the Forum, adaptation practitioners connect, collaborate and innovate, activating a network of professionals across the country. Since its inception, the Forum has prioritized the inclusion of historically marginalized groups through proactive recruitment and provision of ample travel support opportunities. The adaptation community as a whole is reportedly significantly more willing to embrace online events as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but in-person networking remains vitally important to Forum partners.

In order to support both the practitioners who are able to attend the Forum to engage with important extreme weather-related content and extend the reach of the conversation beyond the in-person event, the CO2 Foundation is funding conference host EcoAdapt to do the following:

Phase I: National Adaptation Forum

• Create a curated track at the NAF based on pre-existing submissions featuring presentations focused on impacts of climate change on extreme weather frequency and severity, planning and operational approaches to climate-exacerbated disasters, and/or building community resilience to disasters.
• Record extreme weather-related presentations at the Forum for use in a future virtual Forum event.

Phase II: Virtual Forum Series

• Invite Forum presenters to submit Climate Knowledge Adaptation Exchange case studies, ensuring their material is widely available and accessible to the adaptation community long after the event.
• Analyze Forum survey results to understand how to sustain and improve support of the adaptation community.
• Host an extreme weather adaptation virtual forum series during spring 2023, including recorded content from NAF and new content that responds to needs identified by community survey.

The CO2 Foundation facilitates effective response strategies to climate-amplified disasters with the goal of enhancing social, cultural, and community resilience. The National Adaptation Forum extreme weather track and virtual forum series will foster a national climate change adaptation conversation and catalyze the action required for innovative and collaborative climate-amplified extreme weather resilience.