Highlights

Since 1989, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has submitted annual reports to Congress called Our Changing Planet. The reports describe the status of USGCRP research activities, provide progress updates, and document recent accomplishments.

In particular, Our Changing Planet highlights progress and accomplishments in interagency activities. These highlights represent the broad spectrum of USGCRP activities that extend from Earth system observations, modeling, and fundamental research through synthesis and assessment, decision support, education, and public engagement.

Indicators are measurements or calculations that represent how a complex system is changing over time—for instance, the unemployment rate is an indicator of overall economic health. For the climate system, indicators offer a simple representation of how a highly complex system is changing, providing a benchmark for decision makers that can be used as a gateway into more complex and context-specific information. Indicators allow multiple audiences—including scientists, planners, policy makers, educators, and the public—to better understand and communicate the causes and effects of climate...

Scenarios are plausible alternative futures, each describing what might happen under a range of possible assumptions about policy decisions and the behavior of the Earth system. By illustrating possible future conditions, scenarios provide a basis for analyzing the potential impacts of and responses to global change. USGCRP is working to develop scenarios of change for the United States that can feed into the sustained-assessment process and support the needs of both scientists and stakeholders, focused on population, demographics, land-use change, sea-level rise and coastal flood risk,...

Green infrastructure projects, such as this stormwater planter, help to collect and absorb runoff, among other benefits. Local-level capacity and reliable cost-benefit information are needed to effectively incorporate such solutions into stormwater manage

Water resources in the United States are affected by a number of climate stressors—including increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and extreme events like storms and droughts—and these changing conditions have implications for drinking water and stormwater utilities. Federal agencies are working with one another and with state and local partners to build preparedness and sustainability in this essential sector. For instance, the Federal Support Toolbox—grown out of an initiative led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)—serves as a

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This map shows the number of total heat wave days per summer projected for the mid-21st century, as a factor of increase relative to the end of the 20th century (assuming a scenario of rapid economic growth driven by a balanced portfolio of energy sources

Climate change is expected to increase the number of extremely hot days, posing health risks to vulnerable populations such as the elderly, children, and those with existing cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. To streamline prediction of and adaptation to these events, HHS’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and NOAA held a Heat Health Summit in Silver Spring, MD, in October 2014. The Summit drew participants from across NOAA, CDC, EPA, DOE, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; state and local health departments;

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Federally coordinated regional science centers work individually and together on projects that support tangible outcomes in their regions. For example, Western Water Assessment (WWA, a NOAA RISA team) is partnering with the DOI North Central CSC on a coll

Climate change affects every region of the United States differently, and no single Federal program can tackle the full range of regional decision-support needs. Coordination at the regional scale is vital to ensuring that Federally supported science and risk management efforts best meet the information requirements of decision makers in a variety of sectors. USDA, NOAA, and DOI individually support a portfolio of complementary regional networks that deliver climate science and tools to public officials, agricultural producers, natural resource managers, and

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With leadership by EPA, NOAA, and HHS agencies including CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USGCRP is continuing development of its Climate and Health Assessment, a contribution to the sustained assessment process that will support the next quadrennial NCA report. The USGCRP Climate and Health Assessment will address the need for a more definitive understanding of climate impacts on public health, as called for in the President’s Climate Action Plan. It will synthesize

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Students gather around Science on a Sphere, an educational tool that displays and animates Earth data on a globe. The Climate Education and Literacy Initiative will harness innovative approaches like this one to build awareness and understanding among the

USGCRP agencies are at the center of a new initiative to advance climate education, literacy, and training in the United States. Led by OSTP, the interagency Climate Education and Literacy Initiative aims to connect students and citizens with the best-available scientific information about climate change. Agencies will apply their individual expertise to this unified Federal effort—for example:

The National Park Service will develop a

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Citizen science refers to the engagement of non-professional volunteers in scientific investigations—asking questions, collecting data, or interpreting results. This approach can be especially useful in tracking environmental changes. (Source: NPS)

Citizen science—or the engagement of volunteers in scientific investigations—is a fast-growing field. By collecting data on natural phenomena such as the timing of bird migrations and plant flowering—sometimes from their own backyard—citizen scientists provide essential baseline information about key environmental indicators, in addition to strengthening their own awareness of and connection to their local environment. Citizen science has long been an important component of scientific endeavors and public engagement at USGCRP agencies such as DOI (particularly NPS and

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USGCRP has become a crossing ground for Federal health communities considering the risks of climate change. To expand the reach of this engagement within and beyond the Federal Government, USGCRP agencies supported a number of outreach events over the past year focused on climate and health (see related Highlight 13). As one example, USGCRP engaged a broad spectrum of health stakeholders around the release of the Third National Climate Assessment, disseminating key messages about health impacts through various networks, sharing supplementary resources, and

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The left panel shows an image of clouds over the United States captured by the weather satellite GOES-13 (20:45 UTC, July 29, 2010). The other two panels show model simulations of cloudiness for the same date and approximate time, first excluding (middle)

Thunderstorm clouds play an important role in regional atmospheric dynamics, modulating such factors as air pollution, acid deposition, and—critically for climate models—precipitation and the balance of heat throughout the atmosphere. To date, in part because of the computing power constraints associated with running models at high resolutions, it has proved challenging to model in detail the effects of thunderstorm clouds on the solar radiation that drives the climate system.

Recognizing this opportunity for improvement, scientists with EPA, NOAA, and

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Highlights

Improving Indicators of Change

Developing Scenarios of Change

Supporting Resilient Water Resources and Utilities

Preparing for the Health Hazards of Extreme Heat

Regional Science Networks for Climate-Smart Decision Making

Assessing the Public Health Risks of Climate Change

Toward a More Climate-Literate America

Crowdsourcing Climate: Citizen Science and the National Climate Assessment

Connecting With the Public Health Community of Practice

Modeling Thunderstorm Clouds for Better Regional Climate Predictions