The second official meeting of the U.S. National Assessment Synthesis Team (NAST) took place August 23-28 at the J. Eric Jonsson Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The meeting was chaired by Jerry Melillo and Tony Janetos, the co-chairs of the NAST.

The objective for the meeting was to develop a first-order draft of the Synthesis Report outline. The draft outline developed throughout the course of the meeting contains an Executive Summary, and sections covering introductory materials, past and future conditions in the U.S. (including discussion and description of scenarios used), regions (both summary information and "examples"), sectors (both summary information and "examples"), and synthesis (combining regions and sectors, and exploring cross-cutting issues). Primers are also proposed to cover climate change science, the climate policy domain, and possibly other key areas. The Synthesis Report outline developed in Woods Hole has been circulated to National Assessment participant teams for comments and additional development leading to a working draft; this new draft and further revisions will be discussed at the next Synthesis Team meeting to be held November 16-17 in Washington DC.

In addition, meeting participants worked to develop a strategy for drafting the Synthesis Report making optimal use of the various parallel assessment efforts by regions and sectors, and assuring that the key information from these efforts is integrated into the Report. Other topics discussed at the Woods Hole meeting included development and use of climate and socioeconomic scenarios in the National Assessment, plans for post-2000, and formation of a review panel.