US Global Change Research Program Research Articles

Leveraging U.S. Climate Assessment Research Gaps to Inform Science Innovation

Abstract Over three decades, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has developed an assessment process to integrate, evaluate, and interpret scientific findings on climate change as well as discuss uncertainties. In six USGCRP assessments, authors identified research gaps, or topics that they indicated required more information or study. Examining research gaps on a continual and systematic basis can aid decisions about research projects, programmatic priorities, and strategic scientific visions. The methodology presented here addresses two aims: 1) identify and categorize research gaps within a searchable database and 2) demonstrate use of the database to inform future science planning and assessment. Results include the top 10 database themes, 18 recurring topics across assessments, and a search example for vulnerability gaps. The benefits and limitations of this approach are discussed, along with recommendations to improve future U.S. climate assessment products. Significance Statement The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) regularly assesses the state of the science of climate change and its impacts in national-level reports written by federal scientists, academic researchers, practitioners, and other experts from across the country. These reports are designed to inform policy choices and decision-making by addressing scientific confidence, uncertainty, and research gaps that limit conclusions. We identified research gaps from six climate reports and organized them into a database with over 1000 entries, spanning more than 300 topic areas. Database entries were also sorted into 22 themes for searchability. The database can be used by students, researchers, and program managers to find open research questions and plan future work.

Charting a path for the National Nature Assessment

It's not every day that you get the opportunity to influence a major federal-level assessment from its inception; however, now is just such an occasion. A new evaluation of the state of nature in the US – the first National Nature Assessment (NNA) – is in its early formative stages and you are invited to help shape it. The NNA is one of several efforts being advanced by the Biden-Harris Administration to know, grow, and account for nature – in clear recognition of nature's significance to (among other Administration priorities) the fight against climate change. Nature affects almost every aspect of our lives and means something different to each of us. Even those reading this journal hold diverse views of nature, influenced by our backgrounds and cultures; our personal experiences and communities; our different ways of knowing; and our work across ecosystem types and levels of biological, ecological, and social organization. We've seen the value of including a wide range of perspectives and disciplines in research efforts, reports, and scientific assessments, including in ESA's own products. And we know that overlooking diverse views when considering policy and management decisions can create unnecessary trade-offs, marginalize groups of people, or fail to recognize the full spectrum of roles that nature plays. We need a comprehensive understanding of nature, an assessment enriched by braiding together the stories, scientific findings, Indigenous knowledge, and lived experiences of people from across the US. The NNA is an opportunity to integrate and assess information – from multiple sources and through a diversity of voices – to help gauge what nature means to different people, and to explore the future of the nation's great natural treasures. Launched in 2022 by the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and expected to be completed in 2026, the first-ever NNA aims to explore the many aspects of nature and its connections to issues facing those residing in the US today. Taking stock of the full abundance of our nation's lands, waters, and wildlife and the myriad ways that ecosystems affect US communities, the assessment will investigate how nature interacts with the economy, climate mitigation and adaptation, social equity, public health, and national security. It will allow us to consider what the future may hold, and what options we have for investing in nature as a core part of achieving societal aspirations. The USGCRP is taking initial steps to outline the NNA development process, with much of the scope and details of the assessment still to be determined. The developers will draw on lessons from previous assessments to ensure that the NNA is both useful and usable. For example, a major strength of the National Climate Assessment – now in its fifth cycle (https://www.globalchange.gov/nca5) – is its diverse author team: contributors from across the US with a wide range of expertise work together to create a credible, authoritative source of information on climate change. The National Climate Assessment also has broad salience and relevance, in part due to its multiple opportunities for engagement with and participation beyond the federal government. Building on experiences like these, and given the increasingly stronger calls from the research community for co-production, we aim to conduct the NNA in close collaboration with potential users and to broaden the types of knowledge considered, particularly those ways of knowing that have historically been repressed or overlooked. This process has just begun. We invite you to help shape it and ensure strong, diverse, relevant content. You can start by telling us: What questions should the NNA answer? What needs should it fill? How can we ensure strong collaboration with users and incorporate diverse ways of knowing nature? What form should the final product(s) take to be most accessible and useful to you, your community, and the government? Read more about this Request for Information (https://www.globalchange.gov/content/request-information-framing-national-nature-assessment) and submit your ideas to https://contribute.globalchange.gov through March 31, 2023. Comment is free and open to anyone from anywhere, including other countries. Beyond this initial collaboration on framing the assessment, there will be multiple opportunities to engage with the NNA throughout its development. The NNA is an opportunity to create a new picture of nature in the US – one that reflects the depth and diversity of ways people know, care about, and act on changes in nature. Your input and expertise matter. By design, our collective success depends on your engagement. Please join us in charting a new path for National Nature Assessments.

Addressing the health, safety, welfare, and dignity of all humans: PAs and climate change.

Addressing the health, safety, welfare, and dignity of all humans: PAs and climate change.

Dire warnings sounded about climate change

As intense hurricanes pounded the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and record-breaking wildfires raged in California this year, scientists rang loud alarms about global warming. Soon, they warned, it will be too late to prevent some of the worst effects of climate change, including wildfires, flooding, sea level rise, famine, and destruction of coral reefs. In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that suggested that to prevent these calamities and limit warming to 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels—the figure chosen in the Paris Agreement—drastic changes are needed. By 2030, net carbon dioxide emissions must fall by 45% relative to 2010 levels, and net emissions must taper to zero by 2050. Yet countries, including the US, are already failing to meet the reduction pledges made in the Paris Agreement only two years ago. In November, the US Global Change Research Program released the second volume of its

A research agenda for the energy, water, land, and climate nexus

In an area with as many connections as the energy, water, land, and climate nexus, it can be a challenge to identify the highest priority research opportunities. In collaboration with the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), we undertook a process to isolate and rank a wide variety of potential research topics. Using several forms of Delphic processes, we engaged experts working on related topics to work with us to develop a short list of 15 priority research topics. We briefly describe the process we used, the challenges with developing topics that encompass all of the elements of the energy-water-land-climate (EWLC) nexus, and present the final list, which is intended to be a discussion starter rather than a definitive list. We found that it is relatively easy to identify research topics that touch one or two elements of the nexus, but difficult to identify ones that truly cover the nexus. Priorities identified by our participants in the process include improving policy and planning, understanding human behavior, enhancing data and modeling, managing risk, and understanding regional differences.

Joint effects of storm surge and sea-level rise on US Coasts: new economic estimates of impacts, adaptation, and benefits of mitigation policy

Recent literature, the US Global Change Research Program’s National Climate Assessment, and recent events, such as Hurricane Sandy, highlight the need to take better account of both storm surge and sea-level rise (SLR) in assessing coastal risks of climate change. This study combines three models—a tropical cyclone simulation model; a storm surge model; and a model for economic impact and adaptation—to estimate the joint effects of storm surge and SLR for the US coast through 2100. The model is tested using multiple SLR scenarios, including those incorporating estimates of dynamic ice-sheet melting, two global greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policy scenarios, and multiple general circulation model climate sensitivities. The results illustrate that a large area of coastal land and property is at risk of damage from storm surge today; that land area and economic value at risk expands over time as seas rise and as storms become more intense; that adaptation is a cost-effective response to this risk, but residual impacts remain after adaptation measures are in place; that incorporating site-specific episodic storm surge increases national damage estimates by a factor of two relative to SLR-only estimates, with greater impact on the East and Gulf coasts; and that mitigation of GHGs contributes to significant lessening of damages. For a mid-range climate-sensitivity scenario that incorporates dynamic ice sheet melting, the approach yields national estimates of the impacts of storm surge and SLR of $990 billion through 2100 (net of adaptation, cumulative undiscounted 2005$); GHG mitigation policy reduces the impacts of the mid-range climate-sensitivity estimates by $84 to $100 billion.

Assessment of Health Impact Functions Used in Estimating Economic Damages of Climate Change

Background: Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are used to estimate economic damages of climate change. These estimates, called the social cost of carbon (SCC), are used extensively by policymakers to assess regulatory benefits. Here we evaluate the health based damage functions in IAMs in order to identify potential areas in which environmental epidemiologists can improve estimates of the SCC. Methods: Of the three models currently used by the US EPA to estimate the SCC, the FUND model was selected for this analysis due to its explicit modeling of health impacts and region-specific analysis. A sensitivity analysis for each health endpoint in FUND was completed in order to determine their relative impact on estimates of the SCC. Comparison of these health outcomes to the US Global Change Research Program 2014 prospectus was completed to assess whether additional health endpoints should be added to the FUND model. Results: The FUND model includes many of the health endpoints that have been identified as being responsive to changes in climate. Per unit changes in temperature are modeled to increase health risks proportionally regardless of baseline temperature or social factors that may modify these associations; this is especially apparent in estimates of infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue, but is also pertinent for estimates of cardiovascular and respiratory mortality. Overall, the contribution of health related impacts on estimates of SCC is small relative to other economic impacts. Conclusions: Region specific health functions that take into account baseline climate and social conditions are needed. Providing accurate inputs to IAMs broadens the impact of climate related environmental epidemiology research. Increased communication between epidemiologists and economists will improve estimates of the SCC by incorporating the best available health functions and by informing health scientists of areas needing further research.

Ontology engineering in provenance enablement for the National Climate Assessment

The National Climate Assessment of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) analyzes and presents the impacts of climate change on the United States. The provenance information in the assessment is important because the assessment findings are of great public and academic concern and are used in policy and decision-making. By applying a use case-driven iterative methodology, we developed information models and ontology to represent the content structure of the recent National Climate Assessment draft report and its associated provenance information. We tested the ontology by using it in pilot systems serving information about instances of chapters, scientific findings, figures, tables, images, datasets, references, people, and organizations, etc. in the draft report, as well as interrelationships among those instances. The results successfully help users trace provenance in the draft report, such as finding all the journal articles from which a figure in the report was derived. The provenance information in our work was maintained in the context of the “Web of Data”. In addition to the pilot systems we developed, other tools and services are also able to retrieve and utilize the provenance information. Our work is part of a Global Change Information System coordinated by the USGCRP that will eventually cover provenance information for the entire scope of global change research. Such a system will greatly increase understanding, credibility and trust in the global change research and foster reproducibility of scientific results and conclusions.

R&D ekes out an increase in FY 2015 budget request

With spending caps in place, President Obama proposes an off-budget fund to support additional R&D. NASA would ground a flying observatory, and DOE would sharply curtail its nonproliferation programs.

US Investments in International Climate Research and Applications: reflections on contributions to interdisciplinary climate science and services, development, and adaptation

Climate variability and change have long posed substantial challenges for social, economic and natural systems throughout the world. Incorporating information about climate fluctuations and their impacts is an increasingly important component of risk management and planning in key socio-economic sectors. Understanding and meeting these challenges through effective risk management strategies that foster preparedness, impact mitigation, and adaptation requires a long-term investment in and commitment to sound science, transition, and translation of information among communities, and the application and evaluation of climate services and decision support resources. This science should be developed, implemented and applied in the context of the practical needs and capabilities of communities, stakeholders, and socio-economic sectors if it is to inform resource management challenges, and contribute to the field of study of climate, climate information services, preparedness and adaptation.During the early 1990s, the United States expressed a desire to capitalize on emerging developments in atmospheric and oceanic research and early climate impact studies, in order to develop the institutional capacity to meet these needs on global and regional scales. As a member of the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and working in partnership with the international scientific and governmental community, NOAA led the development of an international research institute, which is known today as the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). Over several decades - from the initial conceptual and demonstration phases, to today’s mature institution – IRI had a substantial influence in linking science and action to risk management. This essay briefly reflects upon the initial vision for and evolution of the IRI; the importance of investments in endeavors of this nature to the US climate research and services communities, including model development, climate prediction and integrated research and assessments; and the value of such an institution to a Federal entity concerned with development and risk management in developing countries - the US Agency for International Development (USAID). We conclude with some thoughts about future directions.

Modest but uneven R&D increases proposed for FY 2013

Uncertainty created by the Budget Control Act of 2011 clouds the outlook for federal science and technologyfunding. Some Department of Energyphysics programs face significant cuts.

Review of Global Change Research Program plan

The draft 10‐year strategic plan for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which proposes broadening the scope of the program from climate change only to climate change and climaterelated global changes, “is an important step in the right direction,” according to a 5 January review of the plan by a committee of the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies. However, the committee also said that the program's legislative mandate is even broader in allowing USGCRP to address many aspects of global change including climate change, the global hydrological cycle, and widespread land use changes. “The Program's legislative mandate is to address all of global change, whether or not related to climate. The Committee concurs that this broader scope is appropriate, but realizes that such an expansion may be constrained by budget realities and by the practical challenge of maintaining clear boundaries for an expanded program,” the report states. “We encourage sustained efforts to expand the Program over time, along with efforts to better define and prioritize what specific topics are included within the bounds of global change research.”

Climate uncertainties and their discontents: increasing the impact of assessments on public understanding of climate risks and choices

US public awareness of the reality and risks of human-caused climate change remains limited, despite strong evidence presented in the IPCC and other major climate assessments. One contributing factor may be that the immense collective effort to produce periodic climate assessments is typically not well matched with public communication and outreach efforts for these reports, leaving a vacuum to be filled by less authoritative sources. Print and online media coverage provides one metric of the US public reach of selected climate assessments between 2000 and 2010. The number of Lexis-Nexis articles for the search terms “climate change” or “global warming” within 14 days of each report’s release varied significantly over time with a peak occurring in 2007. When compared to background “chatter” relating to climate change, each assessment had widely diverse penetration in the US media (~4% for US National Climate Assessment in 2000; ~17% for Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment in 2004; ~19% and ~10% for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report Working Group I and Working Group II respectively in 2007; ~4% for the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) assessment report in 2009; and ~5% for US National Research Council’s America’s Climate Choices reports in 2010). We propose ways to improve the public reach of climate assessments, focusing in particular on approaches to more effectively characterize and communicate the role of uncertainty in human actions as distinct from other sources of uncertainty across the range of possible climate futures.

Creating usable science: Opportunities and constraints for climate knowledge use and their implications for science policy

In the past several decades, decision makers in the United States have increasingly called upon publicly funded science to provide “usable” information for policy making, whether in the case of acid rain, famine prevention or climate change policy. As demands for usability become more prevalent for publicly accountable scientific programs, there is a need to better understand opportunities and constraints to science use in order to inform policy design and implementation. Motivated by recent critique of the decision support function of the US Global Change Research Program, this paper seeks to address this issue by specifically examining the production and use of climate science. It reviews empirical evidence from the rich scholarship focused on climate science use, particularly seasonal climate forecasts, to identify factors that constrain or foster usability. It finds, first, that climate science usability is a function both of the context of potential use and of the process of scientific knowledge production itself. Second, nearly every case of successful use of climate knowledge involved some kind of iteration between knowledge producers and users. The paper argues that, rather than an automatic outcome of the call for the production of usable science, iterativity is the result of the action of specific actors and organizations who ‘own’ the task of building the conditions and mechanisms fostering its creation. Several different types of institutional arrangements can accomplish this task, depending on the needs and resources available. While not all of the factors that enhance usability of science for decision making are within the realm of the scientific enterprise itself, many do offer opportunities for improvement. Science policy mechanisms such as the level of flexibility afforded to research projects and the metrics used to evaluate the outcomes of research investment can be critical to providing the necessary foundation for iterativity and production of usable science to occur.

Decision support for climate change adaptation planning in the US: why it needs a coordinated internet-based practitioners’ network

Decision support resources are emerging across the United States to address the adaptation and mitigation challenges associated with climate variability and change. In theory, climate-related decision support identifies the need to move beyond the linear dissemination of information from experts to decision-makers. Interviews with researchers and federal program managers, however, show that in practice there are still wide gaps between the development of climate science and its application. Lessons learned in two example cases of decision support experiments are discussed to highlight some of the on-going challenges in applying climate science, e.g. defining decision support, involving decision-makers, and determining effectiveness. The published literature also shows these reoccurring challenges but emphasizes more collaboration between science and decision-makers as this improves the relevance, compatibility, and accessibility of climate science information and can increase users’ receptiveness. This article proposes that the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) can help the development of decision support resources, in one way, by coordinating an Internet-based practitioners’ network. A coordinated network could provide opportunities for climate-related decision support practitioners to build collaborative partnerships, share lessons-learned, provide feedback to the USGCRP, and thereby assist the transition of science into decision-making processes to better address adaptation planning.

Climate Change Now Apparent and Unequivocal, New Report Warns

Climate change is happening now in the United States and globally, and its impacts are expected to become increasingly severe for more people and places unless the rate of emissions of heat‐trapping gases is substantially reduced, according to a new report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” issued at a 16 June White House briefing.The 190‐page report, a product of the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), states that “global warming is unequivocal and primarily human‐induced.” Among other key findings of the report—which drew on USGCRP results and other studies including Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment—is that climate change will have numerous impacts on water resources, ecosystems, agriculture, coastal areas, human health, and other sectors.

A Water Cycle Initiative

In August 1999, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) appointed a Water Cycle Study Group (WCSG) to advise the USGCRP agencies on the development of a Global Water Cycle Program. The charge to the WCSG was to define a USGCRP initiative for fiscal years 2001 and beyond. After more than a year of work, which included soliciting views from the broad community of scientists and engineers interested in water cycle research, the WCSG issued its report in 2001 (http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/watercycle/wcsgreport2001/default.htm). The report describes the rationale for research intended to provide critical fundamental knowledge about the water cycle—the amount of water in various reservoirs, the fluxes among these reservoirs, and the role of the changing amounts and fluxes in climate dynamics. Such research will provide information and tools to improve the use of water resources and to reduce losses associated with hydrologic extremes. The details of a research agenda to improve knowledge about the water cycle are necessarily involved. The major questions guiding such research can be stated quite succinctly, however. First, how much water of what quality is available, and how have these measurements of quantity and quality changed over time? The ability to assess the resource depends critically on knowing the amount of water in each water cycle component, how much water is moving among the components, the quality of water, and how amounts and quality have changed over time. Second, how are amounts and quality of water in various water cycle components likely to change in the future—over the next few days in response to weather, over the next few months in response to seasonal change, and over longer times in response to changes in water use, climate, and land use and land cover? Answering these deceptively simple questions will require dedicated work by scientists from a range of earth science disciplines, including hydrogeology, geochemistry, and geophysics. The water cycle research agenda is not restricted to the role of surface and near-surface water on climate. To be sure, more work on land-atmosphere linkages and feedbacks influenced by surface water and soil moisture is needed to understand the climate system. But ground water is the largest reservoir of liquid fresh water on the earth and is certain to become ever more important as a resource. Demand for fresh water is steadily increasing, and at the same time, the overall quality of water for humans and ecosystems is decreasing because of pollution and other human-imposed stresses. The pressure to use ground water will continue to increase, and if the resource is to be used wisely and sustainably, ground water scientists will have to be active participants in water cycle research. The status of our knowledge of ground water components of the global water cycle is not good. We hardly have enough data to determine amounts of stored water for critical and overstressed aquifers in the United States, let alone internationally. Sustainable use of ground water resources demands knowledge of recharge and discharge, fluxes for which adequate measurement techniques are not available in many instances. It is precisely these recharge-discharge processes that must be the focus of a major water cycle research initiative related to ground water (e.g., National Research Council. 2004. Groundwater Fluxes across Interfaces. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press). Data and information with enhanced resolution and increased precision relative to that collected in the past must be developed. Techniques borrowed from neighboring disciplines must be adapted to provide new methods for measuring key variables. Data from new sensors and from existing networks will have to be integrated, and new observation networks will have to be established. Existing long-term records must be archived and preserved, and observations must be continued indefinitely at sites with long high-quality records, so that patterns of temporal variability, including long-term, low-frequency fluctuations, can be identified and studied. All of the measurements—at various scales—will have to be interpreted within the context of conceptual models and their mathematical implementations. Ultimately these models must evolve so that reliable predictions of responses to stresses in the future can be made. To improve predictions, a comprehensive program that includes observations, field experiments, and numerical modeling will be needed. The challenges of these research efforts for ground water scientists are formidable. But it is essential that the challenges be met. The rewards associated with gaining improved understanding are obvious. So are the penalties for failing to do so.

Integrated assessment of Hadley Centre (HadCM2) climate change projections on agricultural productivity and irrigation water supply in the conterminous United States: I. Climate change scenarios and impacts on irrigation water supply simulated with the HUMUS model

In response to a congressional mandate, the US Global Change Research Program organized a National Assessment of Climate Change focusing on geographic regions (e.g. Alaska, Great Plains) and sectors (e.g. public health, agriculture, water resources). This paper describes methodology and results of a study by researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory contributing to the water sector analysis. The subsequent paper makes use of the water supply results to estimate the climate change impacts on irrigated agriculture. The vulnerability of water resources in the conterminous US to climate changes in 10-year periods centered on 2030 and 2095 as projected by the Hadley/United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO) general circulation model (GCM; HadCM2) were modeled using the Hydrologic Unit Model for the United States (HUMUS). HUMUS, a biophysically based hydrology model, consists of a Geographical Information System (GIS) that provides data on soils, land use and climate to drive the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The modeling was done at the scale of the eight-digit United States Geological Survey (USGS) Hydrologic Unit Area (HUA) of which there are 2101 in the conterminous US. Results are aggregated to the four- and two-digit (major water resource region, MWRR) scales for various purposes. Daily records of maximum/minimum temperature and precipitation (PPT) from 1961 to 1990 provided the baseline climate. Water yields (WY), used as a measure of water supply for irrigation, increases from the 1961–1990 baseline period over most of the US in 2030 and 2095. In 2030, WY increases in the western US and decreases in the central and southeast regions. Notably, WY increases by 139 mm (35%) from baseline in the Pacific Northwest. Driven by higher temperatures and reduced precipitation, WY is projected to decrease in the Lower Mississippi and Texas Gulf basins. The HadCM2 (2095) scenario projects a climate significantly wetter than baseline, resulting in water yield increases of 38% on average. Water yield increases are projected to be significant throughout the eastern US—39% in the Ohio basin, for example. Water yields increase significantly in the western US, as well—57 and 76% in the Upper and Lower Colorado, respectively. Climate change also affects the seasonality of the hydrologic cycle. Early snowmelt is induced in western basins, leading to dramatically increased water yields in late winter and early spring. The simulations were run at current (365 ppm) and elevated (560 ppm) atmospheric CO 2 concentrations [CO 2] to account for the potential impacts of the ‘CO 2-fertilization’ effect. The effects of climate change scenario were considerably greater than those due to elevated [CO 2] but the latter, overall, decreased losses and augmented increases in water yield.

Environmental technology resources handbook

FORCES DRIVING ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY Public Awareness Regulation Green Consumerism and Investment Environmental Leadership Voluntary Standards Technology Verification and User Consortiums Conclusion Endnotes HOW TO FIND TFES RESOURCES Focusing the Search Selecting the Source Identifying the Assistance Categories Evaluating the Information Endnotes MAPPING THE ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY JUNGLE The Selection Process Refining Terms for Searches The Technology Development Process INTERAGENCY PROGRAMS Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) Federal Remediation Technology Roundtable (FRTR) Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Endnotes FEDERAL AGENCIES Department of Defense Department of Energy Endnotes ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA) Energy Star Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) Environmental Technology Commercialization Center (ETC2) Small Business Gateway Office of the Chief Financial Officer Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation (OPEI) Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics Office of Research and Development Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER) Office of Wastewater Management (OWM) Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds (OWOW) Transportation Air Quality Center(TRAQ) OTHER FEDERAL AGENCIES United States Agency for International Development (USAID) United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) United States Department of the Interior (DOI) Department of Transportation (DOT) Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Internal Revenue Service (IRS) National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Science Foundation (NSF) INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Global Environment Facility World Bank Asian Development Bank REGIONAL, STATE AND LOCAL AGENCIES Environmental Council of the States Interstate Technology & Regulatory Cooperation (ITRC) Local Government Organizations NGOs, NONPROFITS, AND PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES Engineering Societies Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) Pew Center on Global Climate Change Restore America's Estuaries World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) World Conservation Union (IUCN) World Resources Institute (WRI) INDEX

The Policy Drought on Climate Change

T he holiday season here in the United States was ushered in by a long-awaited report, heralded as laying out the administration's research agenda for climate change. It should interest those in the United States who may have been expecting something meaningful from their government, along with those in Europe and elsewhere who have come to expect disappointment. The draft strategic plan for the combined U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI) will not surprise the second audience and will tell the first that it has fallen victim to yet another triumph of hope over experience. This long report, available at , offers a smorgasbord of moderate-intensity research efforts but merely urges more study on the role of anthropogenic sources in global warming. And it includes NONE of the following: analysis of the tradeoffs involved in a major regulatory push toward fuel economy in the transportation sector, proposed cap-and-trade or other incentives for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and a research program aimed at sequestration technologies. It is, in short, a wait-and-see document. The scientific evidence on global warming is now beyond doubt. Readers of these pages during the past couple of years have seen one careful study after another documenting the role of anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in global warming; describing the impact of past and present climate change on marine and terrestrial ecosystems; and measuring rates of glacial melting in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and on the tops of low-latitude mountains. Old hands have noted a strange resemblance between this effort and an earlier one. NAPAP, begun in the late 1980s, was a Reagan-era effort to study the acid rain problem (the acronym stands for National Acid Precipitation Assessment Project). It was cranked up with some fanfare and had the same leadership as the present study, in the person of James Mahoney (who is probably not to be blamed for either outcome). Like the present climate change plan, NAPAP essentially concluded that the problem needed more careful study. Ironically, it arrived too late, well after the administration of Bush I had decided to take acid rain more seriously. The result was that Congress, with considerable consultation and design coming from the White House, passed the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments containing tradable-permits provisions for limiting sulfur dioxide emissions. It's probably way too much to hope that a similar rescue might be at hand in this case, but there are encouraging signals out there. First, it now appears that industry takes the problem more seriously than the government—surely a record. British Petroleum and other energy companies now clearly expect to be doing business in a low-carbon economy, and they are spending serious money to prepare for it. So is the electric power industry, where some leaders have already made voluntary carbon offsets. Meanwhile, hybrid cars are proliferating and the insurance industry is worried about its viability. Second, Congress may be noting that the politically popular goal of energy independence is linked to that of reducing global warming, and their constituents don't have to read Science to know that most glaciers are melting. It's in their daily newspaper. Third, some states, weary of federal inaction in the matter, have been passing rules of their own: California recently passed a tough law to limit future fleet carbon emissions standards, despite the usual complaints from auto manufacturers that the sky would fall. Especially relevant to the scientific community is that there will be an independent review of the administration's plan by a National Research Council panel chaired by Tom Graedel of Yale. This is an opportunity for the National Academies to make a real difference. The Graedel panel should not be satisfied simply with a marginal critique of what's there in the report. What isn't there is important, so the panel needs to undertake an independent review of the situation, evaluate the seriousness of the challenge, and explain to the government what is missing from the report. The U.S. scientific community has come to expect a great deal from the Academies. In this case, the stakes are well beyond national interest, because the nonparticipation of the United States in the global effort on climate change is more than a national embarrassment. It's dangerous.