Coming Soon: Virginia’s First Comprehensive Climate Assessment
November 4, 2025. George Mason University (Mason) is preparing to release the first Virginia state climate assessment in mid-November, marking a major step toward understanding how climate change is reshaping the Commonwealth’s economy, infrastructure, and communities. The Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) served as a lead author for the chapter on Exposure to Climate Risks and Hazards, which evaluates where and how climate impacts intersect with population centers, employment hubs, and critical infrastructure.
The Virginia Climate Assessment, managed by Mason's Institute for a Sustainable Earth and the Virginia Climate Center with contributions from technical experts statewide, synthesizes decades of research into a unified, evidence-based resource for decisionmakers. It provides the first comprehensive picture of how changes in temperature, precipitation, and sea level are creating new risks and tangible economic impacts across Virginia’s diverse regions and sectors.
As part of the Exposure chapter and previous projects with Mason, CCS mapped how flooding, heat, drought, and compounding hazards converge across each of Virginia’s six climate divisions, using public information like the FEMA National Risk Index, CDC Social Vulnerability Index, and sector-level economic data. The forthcoming report highlights three core insights from CCS’s analysis:
Exposure is widespread: Millions of Virginians already live in counties with elevated multi-hazard risk, exposure that carries real implications for housing, insurance, and local economies.
Economic impacts vary by region: From Tidewater’s coastal flooding to Piedmont’s heat and flash floods, climate threats are already disrupting key sectors and employment bases, shaping local economies in distinct and measurable ways.
Infrastructure links all risks: Virginia’s ports, power grids, and data centers are critical to statewide economic stability but increasingly vulnerable to climate-driven disruption.
Together, these findings underscore the growing importance of data-driven resilience planning across public and private sectors.
Stay tuned for the mid-November release of the full Virginia Climate Assessment, where CCS’s analysis will provide new insight into how climate risk is evolving across the Commonwealth.
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