Climate change will 'inflict substantial damages' on US life according to US government report

Life in the United States will be increasingly altered by the effects of climate change, a landmark US government report has warned.

Produced every four years, the National Climate Assessment is compiled from reports produced by more than a dozen government agencies and departments.

"Climate change is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us," the report says.

That includes worsening air pollution causing heart and lung problems, more diseases from insects, the potential for a jump in deaths during heat waves, and more debilitating allergies.

This year's report, issued on Friday, will be uncomfortable reading for President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed warnings of the dangers.

On Thursday he tweeted: "Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?"

Yet the report from his own government concludes, definitively, that climate change is real, increasingly worrying, and economically potentially devastating.

"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 authors write.

They content that extremes of weather "have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration."

The federal report says the last few years have smashed records for damaging weather in the US, costing nearly $400 billion since 2015.

"Warmer and drier conditions have contributed to an increase in large forest fires in the western United States and interior Alaska," they state.

Human health and infrastructure are at risk, they write. The availability of water is being threatened, coastlines altered, and industries such as farming, fisheries and energy becoming more expensive.

If greenhouse gas emissions are sharply curbed, projections of further damage could change, even though many of the impacts of climate change - including more frequent and more powerful storms, droughts and flooding - are already under way.

"Future risks from climate change depend primarily on decisions made today," it said.

Scientists behind the report spoke of their shock at some of the findings.

"We are seeing the things we said would be happening, happen now in real life," said Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, who co-authored the report.

"As a climate scientist it is almost surreal."

Donald Wuebbles, another co-author and a University of Illinois climate scientist, said: "We're going to continue to see severe weather events get stronger and more intense."

The Western states of the US were at particular risk, the report claims.

"There's real concern about how the West will be able to manage this increasing occurrence," said report co-author Kristie Ebi, a University of Washington public health professor. She said global warming is already harming people's health, but it will only get worse.

The decision to release the report on Black Friday - two weeks before schedule - was seen by some of the authors and critics of the Trump administration as an attempt to avoid it being noticed.

Andrew Light, another co-author and an international policy expert at World Resources Institute, described it as "a transparent attempt by the Trump Administration to bury this report and continue the campaign of not only denying but suppressing the best of climate science."

The White House immediately dismissed the report's findings.

Lindsay Walters, a spokesman for the White House, said the new report was "largely based on the most extreme scenario."

She added that it "contradicts long-established trends by assuming that there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population."

The government's next update of the National Climate Assessment - due in four years time - will, she said, "gives us the opportunity to provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes."