Climate Change Science Program
Project DescriptionThe Climate Change Science Program integrates federal research on climate and global change, as sponsored by thirteen federal agencies and overseen by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Environmental Quality, the National Economic Council and the Office of
Management and Budget.
During the past thirteen years the United States, through the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), has made the world's largest scientific investment in the areas of climate change and global change research -- a total investment of almost $20 billion. The USGCRP, in collaboration with several other national and international science programs, has documented and characterized several important aspects of the sources, abundances and lifetimes of greenhouse gases; has mounted extensive space-based monitoring systems for global-wide monitoring of climate and ecosystem parameters; has begun to address the complex issues of various aerosol species that may significantly influence climate parameters; has advanced our understanding of the global water and carbon cycles (but with major remaining uncertainties); and has developed several approaches to computer modeling of the global climate.
Because of the scientific accomplishments achieved by USGCRP and other research programs during a productive &period of discovery and characterization& since 1990, we are now ready to move into a new
&period of differentiation and strategy investigation&, which is the theme of the President's Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI). In announcing the CCRI, the President directed the reestablishment of priorities for climate change research, including a focus on identifying the scientific information that can be developed within 2 to 5 years to assist the nation's evaluation of optimal strategies to address global change risks. The President also called for improved coordination among federal agencies, to assure that research results are made available to
all stakeholders, from national policy leaders to local resource managers.
The President's direction for CCRI, focusing on the development of near-term decision-support information, requires close integration with the many existing programs managed under the U.S. Global Change Research Program. This will ensure internal consistency of the CCRI research with the full body of global change information developed under the
To accomplish this integration of USGCRP and CCRI activities, the Interagency Climate Change Science Program has assumed oversight of both
programs, with a single interagency committee responsible for the entire range of science projects sponsored by both programs. The Interagency
Climate Change Science Program retains the responsibility for compliance with the requirements of the Global Change Research Act of 1990, including its provisions for annual reporting of findings and short-term plans, scientific reviews by the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, and periodic publication of a ten-year strategic plan for the program.
Information provided http://www.climatescience.gov/about/default.htm