Climate adaptation and the management of climate impacts require cross-sectoral and regional coordination and collaboration, but presently there is no thorough assessment of the adaptation network in the Midwest United States to evaluate how well it achieves such collaboration. We investigated the climate adaptation network across the Midwest to inform the strategic agenda for a climate adaptation boundary organization in Minnesota - the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP). We identified 150 organizations and more than 500 unique connections between them. About ten organizations with more than 25 connections each link the existing Midwest climate adaptation network, but most organizations have fewer than five connections. This asymmetry can affect the flow of resources such as information, technical assistance, and financial support. It can also hinder coordination and collaboration as called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC et al., 2019). The Midwest adaptation network is not well-balanced with respect to the adaptation cycle: many organizations focus on understanding or planning for climate change, with few organizations focused on problem identification, plan implementation, or monitoring. The gaps identified here suggest that MCAP and other regional adaptation organizations can (1) improve cross-sectoral and intraregional coordination and collaboration, and (2) fill gaps in the adaptation cycle, particularly implementation and monitoring. As more communities and jurisdictions move beyond climate planning toward adaptation implementation and management, and as an increasing number of state, federal and private sector funds become available to support implementation, climate service providers such as MCAP should evaluate their services and capacities and adapt alongside the communities they support.

The Minnesota Climate Resilience Indicators & Metrics Project, spanning two years from June 2022 to June 2024, represents a comprehensive effort to determine how to evaluate the state's resilience to the impacts of climate change. Led by the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership and the Institute on the Environment in collaboration with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), the project focused on developing climate resilience metrics aligned with the climate actions identified in the Resilient Communities chapter of the Minnesota Climate Action Framework (CAF).

Minnesota is the state with the strongest winter warming in the contiguous United States. We performed regional projections of the climate across Minnesota for the middle and end of the 21st century. We selected the results from eight recent global climate model projections to calculate climate data over an area of 10 km by 10 km with a regional climate model. Our results indicate that the future climate for the state of Minnesota is likely to be significantly different from what has been observed near the end of the 20th century. Over northern and central Minnesota, winters and summers are expected to be up to 6 and 4°C warmer, respectively, near the end of the 21st century. Spring precipitation may increase by more than 1 mm d⁻¹ over northern Minnesota. Over the central part of the state, winter snow depth is suggested to decrease by more than 12 cm. The number of days per year with snow depth of more than 2.54 cm (one inch) is expected to decrease by up to 55. These results are expected to influence regional decision-making related to agriculture, infrastructure, water resources, and other sectors.