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.
Collaborative studies among scientists and decision-makers are identifying strategies to meet current and future water demands.
The western United States faces growing water challenges. Drought, population change, aging infrastructure, and ecosystem needs all strain existing water and power infrastructure, and future climate change is expected to further...
Collaboration across modeling, observational, and process research communities aims to improve how models represent and predict precipitation.
Many extreme events and related impacts are associated with the intensity, duration, and frequency of precipitation, including drought, flooding, wildfire, and severe storms. Understanding when, where, and how much precipitation will fall can help decision-makers and planners in agriculture, emergency management, energy, and other sectors prepare for and reduce costs from potential impacts. While models are skilled at simulating...
A reconstruction of daily weather back to 1806 puts current climate trends into historical perspective.
Historical weather reconstructions, or reanalyses, combine weather model output and observations from many sources to estimate the state of the atmosphere at a particular instant in time, over the entire globe. Reanalyses provide the context for understanding how weather and climate events and trends are changing over time and support improved prediction of future changes.
An interagency partnership between NOAA and DOE supported an...
Experimental warming of a peatland ecosystem showed a rapid shift towards net carbon loss to the atmosphere.
Peatlands cover only about 3 percent of Earth’s land surface but store around 30 percent of global soil carbon. As the climate warms, these carbon stocks are vulnerable to release into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, contributing to a cycle of further warming and carbon release. The SPRUCE (Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments...
The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) project concluded a yearlong expedition into the Arctic ice pack, collecting data that aims to advance understanding, modeling, and prediction of Arctic environmental change.
Sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has shrunk dramatically over the past four decades as temperatures in the region have warmed at over twice the rate as the rest of the globe. This trend is expected to continue, resulting in nearly sea-ice free late...
The U.S. research centers that develop climate and Earth system models and the U.S. scientific community are key participants in long-running collaborative efforts to improve knowledge on climate change. A number of major interagency activities supporting improvements in climate modeling took place in 2019.
Most prominently, the World Climate Research Programme Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) is currently in its sixth phase (CMIP6). The earlier phases of CMIP experiments have provided the research community...
