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

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USGCRP Introduction & Overview

The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was created in 1989 as a high-priority national research program to address key uncertainties about changes in the Earth's global environmental system, both natural and human-induced; to monitor, understand, and predict global change; and to provide a sound scientific basis for national and international decisionmaking. Since its inception, the USGCRP has strengthened research on global environmental change and fostered insight into the processes and interactions of the Earth system, including the atmosphere, oceans, land, frozen regions, plants and animals, and human societies. The USGCRP was codified by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (PL 101-606). The basic rationale for establishing the program was that the issues of global change are so complex and wide-ranging that they extend beyond the mission, resources, and expertise of any single agency, requiring instead the integrated efforts of several agencies.

The USGCRP is organized into a set of linked research program elements, which together support scientific research across a wide range of interconnected issues of climate and global change. Each of these research elements focuses on topics crucial to documenting and monitoring change, improving projections of change, or developing useful products to support decisionmaking. The program focuses on these elements because they are all major components of the Earth's environmental systems, they are undergoing changes due to a variety of natural and human-induced causes, and changes in one area affect processes and the state of the others such that it is not possible to understand how the Earth system or its any of its components (e.g., climate) will evolve without understanding important characteristics of the others.

Research Program Elements

The research program elements include:

USGCRP-supported research focuses on how the composition of the global atmosphere is altered by human activities and natural phenomena, and how such changes in atmospheric composition influence climate, ozone, ultraviolet radiation, pollutant exposure, ecosystems, and human health. Research addresses processes affecting the recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer; the properties and distribution of greenhouse gases and aerosols; long-range transport of pollutants and implications for air quality; and integrated assessments of the effects of these changes. Atmospheric composition issues involving interactions with climate variability and change -- such as interactions between the climate system and the stratospheric ozone layer, or the effects of global climate change on regional air quality -- are of particular interest at present.

USGCRP-supported research on climate variability and change is being focused on how climate elements that are particularly important to human and natural systems -- especially temperature, precipitation, clouds, winds, and storminess -- are affected by changes in the Earth system that result from natural processes as well as from human activities. Activities in the program are specifically oriented toward predictions of seasonal to decadal climate variations (e.g., the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)); improved detection, attribution, and projections of longer-term changes in climate; the potential for changes in extreme events at regional to local scales; the possibility of abrupt climate change; and ways to improve the communication of this information (including characterization of uncertainty) to inform national dialogue and support public and private sector decisionmaking.

USGCRP-supported research on the global water cycle focuses on the effects of variability and change in the water cycle and climate systems on the capacity of societies to provide adequate supplies of clean water; and how natural processes and human activities influence the distribution and quality of water within the Earth system and to what extent the resultant changes are predictable. Specific areas include: identifying trends in the intensity of the water cycle and determining the causes of these changes (including feedback effects of clouds on the global water and energy budgets as well as the global climate system); predicting precipitation and evaporation on timescales of months to years and longer; and modeling physical/biological processes (including interactions with human health) and human use of water, to facilitate efficient water resources management.

USGCRP-supported research on changes in land use and land cover focuses on the processes that determine the temporal and spatial distribution of land cover and land use change at local, regional, and global scales; how land use and land cover can be projected over timescales of 10-50 years; how the dynamics of land use, land management, and land cover change will affect global environmental changes and regional-scale environmental and socioeconomic conditions, including economic welfare and human health; and how global environmental changes will affect land use and land cover. Research will identify and quantify the human drivers of land use and land cover change; improve monitoring, measuring, and mapping of land use and land cover and the management of data systems; and develop projections of land cover and land use change under various scenarios of climate, demographic, economic, and technological trends.

USGCRP-supported research on the global carbon cycle focuses on:

1. identifying the size and variability of the dynamic reservoirs and fluxes of carbon within the Earth system and how carbon cycling might change and be changed in the future; and
2. providing the scientific underpinning for evaluating options being considered by society to manage carbon sources and sinks to achieve an appropriate balance of risk, costs, and benefits.

Specific programs and projects focus on North American and oceanic carbon sources and sinks; the impact of land use change and resource management practices on carbon sources and sinks; projecting future atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane concentrations and changes in land-based and marine carbon sinks; and the global distribution of carbon sources and sinks and how they are changing.

USGCRP-supported research on ecosystems focuses on:

1. how natural and human-induced changes in the environment interact to affect the structure, functioning, and services of ecosystems at a range of spatial and temporal scales, including those ecosystem processes that in turn influence regional and global environmental changes; and
2. what options society may have to ensure that desirable ecosystem goods and services will be sustained, or enhanced, in the context of still uncertain regional and global environmental changes.

Among the specific focus areas are the structure and functioning of ecosystems, including cycling of nutrients, and how these nutrients interact with the carbon cycle; and key processes that link ecosystems with climate.

USGCRP-supported research on human contributions and responses to global change is relevant to each of the other research program elements. The current focus of this research is on the potential effects of global change on human health; human forcing of the climate system, land use, and other global environmental changes; regional and sectoral assessments of vulnerability and resilience; decision support under conditions of significant complexity and uncertainty; and integrated assessment methods.

The chapters of Part II of the draft Strategic Plan provide an overview of each research program element, including research questions, an overview of the current state of knowledge, products and benefits from the research, needed scientific inputs to reach objectives, and linkages with other national and international programs.

Internationally, the World Climate Research Programme, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, and the International Human Dimensions Programme provide the broad framework within which US research efforts are coordinated with those of other nations. Robust collaborative efforts with international partners through the Integrated Global Observing Strategy and the Global Climate, Oceans, and Terrestrial Observing Systems enhance the productivity of US investments in observations. USGCRP agencies also have developed bilateral and multilateral cooperative activities with a range of developed and developing countries: a few examples include ongoing scientific cooperation with Japan and partnerships with international organizations and national governments to apply forecasts of ENSO and other products of the program. The program benefits from and supports activities in developing countries that serve both research and capacity-building purposes through the System for Analysis, Research, and Training, the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, and other efforts. International linkages particular to specific areas of research are described in relevant sections of each chapter. Chapter 14 provides an overview of international activities conducted under the Climate Change Science Program by the Climate Change Research Initiative and the USGCRP.