Recent evidence has revealed that the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are not as static as once thought. Accelerated ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet, disintegrating ice shelves around Antarctica, and signs that several marine-terminating glaciers in Antarctica have begun an irreversible retreat all signal that changes are taking place faster than was thought possible. Ice sheets are projected to contribute significantly to global sea-level rise, which poses dramatic risks for coastal communities and island nations worldwide. In response to these rapid changes, several USGCRP...
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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. Highlights describe the state of science at the time of publication of each yearly report, and may not reflect more recent advances in understanding. The date of publication of the source report is noted on each highlight page.
Over the Great Plains region of the United States, summertime thunderstorms often occur after sunset. Much of this nighttime rainfall is caused by large, organized storm systems and plays a critical role in the hydrology and agriculture of the region, especially over the more arid western Great Plains. During the summer months, these nighttime storm systems provide 30-70% of the region’s precipitation and can also cause severe weather, including flash floods, intense damaging winds, and large hail. Current weather and climate models have difficulty predicting the onset, location, frequency...
Northern peatlands contain vast organic carbon stocks in danger of release into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases as the climate warms, leading to a positive-feedback cycle of further warming and carbon release. Through field experiments in a Minnesota peat bog, DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the USDA Forest Service (USDA-FS), and EPA are collaborating alongside university partners to test how peatland ecosystems respond to conditions that simulate the atmosphere of the future, and improve the ability to predict the release of stored carbon and its impact on climate warming. The...
Founded in 2001, the Global Carbon Project (GCP) is an international scientific collaboration investigating the biophysical and human components of the global carbon cycle, the interactions between them, and their response to a changing climate. The GCP tracks sources and sinks of carbon dioxide and methane, the two most important greenhouse gases directly emitted by human activities—providing annual updates on emissions trends, atmospheric concentrations, and sources of uncertainty, in a format accessible to policymakers....
As climate change increasingly impacts society and ecosystems, demand for reliable information about climate conditions now and in the future is growing. Climate research is conducted by two distinct communities, one working on climate forecasts for the near-term future and the other on climate-change projections over decades to centuries. Despite these different foci, the boundaries between these two communities increasingly overlap, and they share many common methods and challenges. Enhanced collaboration across modeling centers and communities can help create more valuable climate-...
In 2015, drought impacts in the Western United States cost an estimated $4.5 billion. Impacts included the fallowing of hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland, excess groundwater pumping, and the exacerbation of wildfire conditions, which contributed to fires that caused the highest annual total of U.S. acreage burned since record-keeping began in 1960. As these impacts become more prevalent under a changing climate, preparedness, including an early-warning system for drought conditions, is increasingly important in many parts of the United States. The...
The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon is a periodic fluctuation of sea-surface temperatures and atmospheric pressure across the tropical Pacific Ocean. During the El Niño phase of the cycle, the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean warms substantially. This can cause significant short-term increases in global-average surface temperatures, and through atmospheric teleconnections, a strong El Niño event can affect weather patterns around the globe. A particularly strong El Niño emerged during the winter/spring season of...
The Climate Education and Literacy Initiative, launched by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in coordination with USGCRP and many of its member agencies, helps connect American students and citizens with the best available, science-based information about climate change. Efforts through the Initiative are increasing learning opportunities for students, equipping educators with science-based information and resources, enhancing climate-related...
Vast quantities of carbon—twice the size of the current amount in the atmosphere—are stored in frozen permafrost soils in Arctic regions. The Arctic climate is warming much more rapidly than the global average, leaving these carbon pools highly vulnerable to release into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane as soils thaw and decompose, leading to a feedback cycle of further warming and increasing carbon release. The potential for these carbon stocks to increase global-warming rates, and the rapid changes already observed in the permafrost region, have captured the attention of...
A key challenge for Earth System Models is accurately representing land surface and subsurface processes and their complex interactions in a warming climate. This is true for ecosystems across the globe, but particularly critical for Arctic ecosystems, which are projected to warm at a rate twice that of the global average by the end of the 21st century. The Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments in the Arctic (NGEE-Arctic) project is addressing this challenge by integrating process studies, ecosystem observations, and computational...