Our Nation’s Plan for Research in
Climate Change

Climate Change Science
Program Focuses First on
Gaps in Knowledge

One year ago, as Washington wallowed in the first snowstorm of a blustery winter, the U.S. government hosted a planning workshop on its new Climate Change Science Program. Over 1300 citizens, stakeholders and scientists volunteered their comments on a Draft Plan. Science planners wanted to merge research now scattered among 13 separate federal agencies under one umbrella, and to create new research in the next two to four years that will reduce uncertainty or answer key questions about climate change.

The National Academy of Sciences had criticized the Draft Plan as “lacking a vision, clear goals, and explicit priorities.” (See our report in the Spring 2003 newsletter, or the Academy’s critique.) After considering the critique and hundreds of comments received on the draft, the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) published their Strategic Plan plus a Vision for the Program and Highlights. As we go to press, the National Academy announced their final critique of the Strategic Plan. They praised the Plan for being "much improved", ambitious, and broad in scope, but warned that for it to succeed, the government must commit new funds for the Plan's new elements, though there is no evidence for any such commitment.

What is the essence of this ambitious Program? What is its vision, and where is it going?

Vision: After the National Academy criticized the draft plan for lacking a vision, the planners announced their “Guiding Vision”: A Nation and a Globe empowered with scientific knowledge is able to manage the risks and opportunities of changes in the climate and environment (slightly paraphrased).
This says that we had better be prepared for any global changes in the environment, whatever they may be, and some change may even be good.

The Mission of the CCSP is to “Create and apply knowledge of the Earth’s global environment through research, observations, support for decisions, and communication.” These are the four key approaches to meeting the Plan’s goals. This article covers only the first approach, scientific research.

Priorities. First, the Science Program chose to follow some recommendations of the National Research Council (NRC – an arm of the National Academy of Sciences) in its report “Climate Change Science” in 2001. The Program also must meet the requirements of the Law* and the President’s 2001 initiative on climate change. The priority research topics of the Climate Change Science Program will be:

• the sources and sinks of carbon in the global carbon cycle, particularly in North America;

• the sensitivity of climate to external changes, and the feedbacks in the climate system that determine the amount and the rate of temperature increases;

• the distribution and the effects of aerosols in the atmosphere.

In its 2001 report, the National Research Council began by recommending to the President:

“Predictions of global climate change will require major advances in understanding and modeling of (1) the factors that determine atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and (2) the so-called ‘feedbacks’ that determine the sensitivity of the climate to an increase in greenhouse gases.”

The NRC then identified six “key gaps” in the scientific understanding of climate change (see the box above). For the next four years, the Administration’s priority is to emphasize three of these six areas of uncertainty.

Science Goals.

The new Science Program organizes the nations’s climate research around five goals:

1. To better understand the Earth’s past and present climate— including its variability—and to understand the causes of observed climate change and variations.

In part, this goal is to understand natural climate cycles, such as El Niño, and the North Atlantic Oscillation; to improve forecasting of such variations; to understand how and why climate has changed, how climate change affects extreme weather, and whether such extreme events are “natural”or not.

2. Define and measure the forces that change the Earth’s climate.

This goal includes “quantifying” the amounts, sources, and sinks of greenhouse gases and aerosols that affect Earth’s climate, and what creates and destroys them.

3. Project how Earth’s climate may change in the future with more confidence and certainty.

The Program intends to build the Nation’s capacity to develop and use climate models, and to clarify the limitations of models, within 2 years. Another part of this goal is to understand some key “feedbacks” that either amplify or dampen the initial changes due to greenhouse gases and other agents. This would allow us to understand “climate sensitivity”: how much will climate change if we do this or do that ?

4. Understand the vulnerability, and also the adaptability, of natural communities, agriculture, and human societies, to climate and global change.

It is good to know in advance what the impacts of climate change may be, in order to reduce the negative impacts while taking advantage of positive impacts by adapting to the changes.

5. Explore ways to manage the risks of climate change and variation. What are the limitations of these ways of risk management? Explore opportunities of which our society might take advantage.

National Academy praises Plan, but notes Government not backing it with new funds

Highest Priority Science:
What To Do in Two to Four Years

The Climate Change Science Program results from fusing a high-priority action agenda with the ongoing long-term Global Change Research Program that began in 1990. The short-term agenda evolved from President Bush’s announcement in 2001 of the Climate Change Science Initiative, whose task is to provide answers to the gaps in understanding climate change in the box at the left, below.

The Program will address these gaps in some 20 “synthesis and assessment reports” during the next four years. The National Academy questioned the purpose of these reports. They urged the government to write these reports explicitly for decision makers, local and regional, national and international. Here are the priority efforts grouped by the Programs’s five goals.

Goal 1: Understand the Earth’s past and present climate and the causes of observed climate change

Two questions are to be completed within 2 years:

• How much has the temperature changed in the lower atmosphere in the last 25 years? This is an attempt to reconcile differences among research teams. (See our Lead article in this issue.)

• How has climate changed in the Arctic in the distant past ? What does that tell us about recent rapid changes in Arctic climate? (See our brief report in this issue.)

Within 2 to 4 years:

• Re-analyze historical data for key climate patterns, then attempt to attribute causes to observed changes in the past.

Goal 2: Quantify the forces that change the Earth’s climate

TO BE COMPLETED IN TWO YEARS:

• Project future emissions and concentrations of greenhouse gases;

• Complete a carbon budget for North America, and its role in the global cycle of carbon.

TO BE COMPLETED IN FOUR YEARS

• What are the properties of aerosols in the atmosphere, and how do they affect climate?

• Are ozone-depleting gases, and ozone itself, increasing or decreasing? What will their effects be on climate and on exposure to ultraviolet (UV) rays?

Goal 3: Project the future climate of Earth with more confidence and certainty

Within 2 years, clarify the uses and limitations of climate models, and their sensitivities and uncertainties.

Within 4 years, the Program will address:

• Projections of future climates based on various scenarios of emissions;
• The prospects for extreme climatic and weather events;
• The risk of abrupt changes in global climate.

Goal 4: Understand the vulnerability and adaptability of natural communities and human societies to climate change

Within 2 years, evaluate how well societies can cope with potential rises in sea level.

WITHIN FOUR YEARS

• How much climate change can natural ecosystems withstand before they suddenly change?
• Natural communities have already changed (blossoming is earlier in spring, growing seasons are longer). What is causing these changes?
• Develop scenarios of the impacts of various levels of greenhouse gases on the environment, economy, resources, and society.
• How is US transportation affected by climate change and variations?

Goal 5: Explore how to manage the risks and opportunities of climate changes

Three research topics should all be completed within 2 years:

• There is a great need for regional climate information. What is the reliability and the limitations of current regional forecasts and observations, especially for making decisions?
• How should scientific uncertainty be evaluated, and communicated to decision makers ?
• Use seasonal and annual climate forecasts in experiments in decision support, for planning and managing resources.

LONGER TERM RESEARCH

The Climate Change Science Program has organized its research in seven main Areas (called research elements) in the Strategic Plan. As a practical matter, distinct teams of research planners and managers have been writing separate chapters of the Strategic Plan. These research areas were suggested four years ago in a report of the National Research Council. The seven areas are:
• Composition of the Atmosphere

• Climate Change and Climate Variability:

• Global Carbon Cycle:

• Global Water Cycle

• Land Use change

• Ecosystems

• Human contribution to global changes and human responses

The team responsible for each area has prioritized its own research topics for the next ten years around three to six scientific questions, or 33 questions altogether. Climate Science Forum will have articles in its future issues on the questions emphasized by the Strategic Plan.

New National Academy critique

   In its just released report, a Panel of the National Academy of Sciences urged that this "much improved" Strategic Plan be put into force as soon as possible. While the Plan can still be improved, the big challenge will be to implement it, said Panel chair Thomas E. Graedel, of Yale University. The present budget of the CCSP is not capable of supporting the ambitious expansion of activities, and the new elements of the Plan lack any "home" in existing federal agencies which might guarantee their funding. The Panel recommended, therefore, that the CCSP Program (1) create a clear budgeting process tied to federal agencies, (2) secure the funding, and (3) find new approaches to fund the new ventures.

The new management structure of the Program is complex and "essentially untested," the Academy Panel cautioned. They urged the leadership to create accountability among managers for meeting Program goals. Finally, the Academy Panel wants the government to create an Advisory Board to ensure the independence and credibility of its climate research. The involvement of cabinet level administration officials (necessary for obtaining the needed funding) may lead to real or perceived political influence, that would discredit the whole initiative.

Finally, the Academy said that the Plan "falls short" in creating and sustaining an Earth observation system that can answer the crucial questions outlined in this article. It also lacks a strategy for meeting the goals in climate modeling, including long-term climate prediction, regional climate prediction, and prediction of impacts on society.

* The Global Change Research Act of 1990 (Public Law 101–606) 

CONTENTS

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FROM THE EDITOR

A well stated Vision would help the Nation to focus on understanding climate change and then to apply that knowledge. The Nation needs to make some hard choices about what kind of science to invest in. Unfortunately, the Vision statement fails to make those choices.

The choice of Goals for the next two to four years, however, succeeds where the Vision does not. The five goals specify the largest gaps in our understanding of climate change, and ask scientists to close these gaps or at least to reduce uncertainty around them in two to four years. That adds a sense of urgency to climate science which has been lacking.

Though debates on the causes of climate changes will certainly continue, now answering the “key questions” will become more urgent than asking them.

This Program has succeeded in involving the interested public. More than 1,300 scientists, stakeholders, and citizens attended the Planning Workshop in December 2002, and most of them contributed comments. Because of the number of participants, and because 13 federal agencies were involved in drafting it, the revised Strategic Plan is unwieldy (although it is better than the draft plan). The document attempts to satisfy many sectors having competing viewpoints. The Climate Change Science Program is a compromise, with a vision that is less than inspiring, and a long-term research agenda that suffers from a lack of focus.

Nevertheless, in the short-term plan, “key scientific uncertainties” about climate change are going to receive the focused attention they sorely need. Some activists argue that spending two years on uncertainties will delay actions needed now. Yet as slow as it has been to develop, this road map for Climate Change Science is an ambitious step in the right direction. As the National Academy pointed out, "the devil is in the details." These first steps will falter unless the Congress and Executive Branch commit to new funds for the expansion of climate science.