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.

Building Regional Collaboration for Drought Resilience

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...

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,...

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Highlights

Building Regional Collaboration for Drought Resilience

Improving Indicators of Change

Developing Scenarios of Change