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.

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...

Sea ice in the Arctic fluctuates from year to year, but the annual minimum extent (measured each year in September) has decreased overall since measurements began in the late 1970s. Changes in sea ice have implications both for the environment and for hum

Although the volume and surface extent of Arctic sea ice varies between seasons and years, observations show a long-term down-ward trend over the last three decades. Variability in Arctic sea ice is an important indicator of global climate change, and also has implications for increasing human activity in the Arctic. In an effort to improve forecasts of Arctic sea ice on seasonal to interannual time scales, the Sea Ice Prediction Network (SIPN) was recently created with support from several USGCRP

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The NASA GEOS5 model has made significant progress in simulating the MJO, demonstrated by how closely its output (right panel) visually resembles satellite observation data (left panel; in both panels, MJO events are represented as lines of green, red, a

Predicting climate conditions anywhere from two weeks to a season in advance is critical for making informed decisions and safeguarding infrastructure across various sectors of the U.S. economy, including water resources, energy supply, public safety, and agriculture, among many others.

USGCRP agencies are supporting improved climate forecasts on these relatively short timescales through field campaigns coupled with model development and analysis efforts. DOE, NASA, NOAA, NSF, and DOD’

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A comparison of observed (left) and simulated (right; single model realizations) hurricane tracks around North America between 1981 and 2008 (the horizontal and vertical axes show longitude and latitude, respectively). Tropical cyclones are challenging to

Overview
Climate and Earth system modeling supported by USGCRP agencies such as DOE, NASA, NOAA, NSF, and others was foundational to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) on the scientific basis for climate-change, released in 2013. Along with international partners, Federal and Federally supported modeling centers

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This conceptual framework shows linkages between categories of indicators. (Source: USGCRP indicators program)

Overview
Indicators are measurements or calculations that represent the status, trend, or performance of a system (e.g., the economy, agriculture, air quality). USGCRP, with the participation of 9 of its 13 member agencies—NOAA, NASA, EPA, USDA, DOE, DOD’s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), HHS’s

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Highlights

Modeling efforts drive advances in projections of future climate change

Predicting Changes in Arctic Sea Ice

DYNAMO: Linking Observations and Models to Predict Near-Term Climate

Modeling 20th and 21st Century Climate to Understand and Predict Change

Developing Indicators of Climate Change