Strategic Plan for the
Climate Change
Science Program
Review draft, November 2002

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For details on NASA's Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) Education initiatives.  See:

Education Strategy (1996)

2002 Education Catalog

Chapter 13
Reporting and Outreach

The Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) focuses on establishing and applying priorities for climate change research so the Nation can address and evaluate global and climate change risks and opportunities. Improved coordination, reporting, and outreach among federal agencies are required to make research results and decision support resources more readily available and useful to stakeholders. This reporting and outreach plan consists of working with two kinds of stakeholders. The first includes those who need or are affected by climate information, including policymakers, resource managers, the scientific community, the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the international community. The second kind of stakeholder includes those involved in education -- whether it is the general public, K-12 students, or those who communicate information (i.e., media, educators). As users of climate information, the needs of the stakeholders for reliable, accurate, and easily understood data should be taken into account in research planning and execution of this strategic plan.

With many near-term products identified in the CCSP strategic plan, especially in the Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI) elements, it is especially important to integrate public information and outreach considerations at an early stage. In particular, an interagency inventory of outreach activities is required along with an interagency working group to address outreach issues and coordinate a plan.

Education and outreach on global change research occurs at many levels of the federal government. However, there is no routine and comprehensive interagency assessment of public information and outreach efforts. A relatively small portion of the overall public information and outreach effort occurs at the interagency level. An example is the Global Change Research Information Office (GCRIO), which responds to a large volume of inquiries and contributes to the distribution of documents such as Our Changing Planet. The US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) coordination office also has sponsored limited outreach activities that have included a monthly Congressional seminar series (May 1995 through July 2000), a website, and responses to frequent information requests from stakeholders. A significant amount of interagency outreach activity also is associated with the working groups of the CCSP. In particular, numerous stakeholders, especially within the research community, have been engaged in the preparation and reviews of long-term strategic plans.

Reporting and outreach efforts are also individually pursued by each agency. Efforts include activities in which agencies:

Overall, there is a need to survey the federal agencies so they can determine what is effective and how to best facilitate outreach without duplicating efforts. A strategy is needed for allocating responsibilities and ensuring participation, even when faced with competing agency priorities. The CCSP will facilitate interagency coordination of outreach efforts so information generated from federally-funded global change research is effectively disseminated and communicated. The CCSP will also coordinate plans to communicate research results so reporting and outreach activities produce more useful and timely information.

Information developed by the CCSP will be used by decisionmakers in debating and selecting possible strategies to mitigate and adapt to global change without unnecessarily compromising the economy or energy security. Decisionmakers as defined in Chapter 4 are those who are actively involved in policy at the national and regional level and those who are making operational decisions for natural resources based on climate information. Reporting and outreach for decisionmakers are a priority for the CCSP.

The Global Change Research Act of 1990 established the USGCRP and calls upon officials to "consult with actual and potential users of the results of the Program to ensure that such results are useful in developing national and international policy responses to global change." It requires a plan that will "produce information readily usable by policymakers attempting to formulate effective strategies for preventing, mitigating, and adapting to the effects of global change." The law furthermore mandates a Global Change Research Information Office (GCRIO) to disseminate useful scientific research information "to foreign governments, businesses, and institutions, as well as the citizens of foreign countries."

The communication of information on global and climate change research to Congress, the Administration, and our international partners is critically important to ensure well-informed discussion and decisions. In addition to publishing Our Changing Planet each fiscal year, the CCSP will facilitate agency coordination to:

Local and regional governments, businesses, and NGOs need an awareness and understanding of existing and planned resources and technologies available to support their decisions. They require familiarity with the integration of science and technology that will emerge from the coordination of the CCRI with NCCTI. National and regional decisionmakers need special analysis of scenarios, model outputs, and climate data. They require state-of-the-art observations of climate and climate variability. Researchers need to understand how uncertainty is used in decisionmaking so that uncertainties are effectively communicated.

To ensure that these stakeholders have research and decision support resources, the CCSP will facilitate agency coordination to:

The general public is the largest and the most important audience for the communication of reliable global change information. A well-informed citizenry is essential for responding appropriately to the challenges posed by climate change and other global change issues. Because it is critical that these audiences have access to clear, consistent, and accurate information about global change research and its findings, the CCSP will work closely with federal agencies to ensure reporting of relevant information in a useful and accessible format.

The CCSP and participating federal agencies will identify a range of activities and initiatives for reporting useful global change information to the public. Information will be provided either directly from the CCSP and federal agencies or indirectly (i.e., via media outlets) and will be used not only to respond to public inquiries, but also to inform key constituents about the importance that science can play in decision-making.

Many federal agencies already are effectively communicating with the media by providing information about global and climate change science. With improved strategic coordination, the CCSP and federal agencies can coordinate existing activities or identify new opportunities for more effective media coverage.

The CCSP will facilitate agency coordination to:

The importance of education has long been recognized by federal agencies, which individually have sponsored activities directed at teachers and students from kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12). These range from the National Science Foundation's very extensive efforts directed at educators to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) Education initiatives. They also include many websites such as those maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In addition, agencies have, to a limited extent, cosponsored collaborative K-12 educational initiatives such as the Climate Change Partnership Education Program initiated by the EPA, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Despite these programs, American school children are still not adequately educated in the sciences. According to the National Science Board's Science & Engineering Indicators 2002 (NSB, 2002), in mathematics and science "few students are attaining levels deemed Proficient or Advanced by a national panel of experts." It furthermore says that "internationally, US student relative performance becomes increasingly weaker at higher grade levels." Evidence suggests the problem rests not so much on the amount of classroom time devoted to science, but on the quality of the curriculum and instruction. Any federal effort to significantly improve global change education therefore will have to be strategically focused on teachers and the instructional resources they have available. In addition, because so many children access the Internet at home and at school, K-12 education initiatives also can effectively reach children directly through that medium.

To ensure that students and educators have the required resources, the CCSP will facilitate agency coordination to:

NSB, 2002.  National Science Board, Science & Engineering Indicators 2002 (Arlington, Virginia: National Science Foundation).