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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.

Education

Toward a More Climate-Literate America

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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Indicators

Crowdsourcing Climate: Citizen Science and the National Climate Assessment

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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International

Engaging the Philanthropic Sector to Meet Climate Challenges

Philanthropic organizations can play a pivotal role in how communities strategize around education, housing, transportation, public health, and other social issues that link to the environment. These organizations are in a unique position to build synergy between Federal, local, and private efforts to improve climate literacy and help communities minimize and prepare for the consequences of climate change. As part of an ongoing tri-agency collaboration, program managers from NSF, NOAA, and NASA have been acting as government liaisons in bi-monthly meetings

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Modeling

Seasonal Prediction Systems: From Research to Operations

Warm colors on this map show where output from NOAA's GFDL-FLOR model correlates positively (yellow = strongest correlation) with seasonal observations of tropical cyclone activity, demonstrating the model's capacity for predicting such phenomena. (Source

Predicting climate on a seasonal basis can benefit decision makers in key sectors like energy, water resources, and agriculture, among others. A number of USGCRP agencies are working to improve the Nation’s seasonal forecasting capacity through major investments in innovative climate models that can bridge the needs of atmospheric research and operational forecasts. As one example, a new model developed by NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, known as

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International

Tracing Short-Lived Climate Forcers in the Arctic

POLARCAT measured short-lived atmospheric pollutants, such as black carbon, which affect regional climate in the Arctic.

The Arctic is facing rapid climate and environmental change relative to many other parts of the world. In addition to long-lived greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, short-lived climate forcers—in the form of pollutants such as black carbon and trace gases— contribute to warming in this region. A new synthesis, recently published in BAMS, highlights the key results emerging from POLARCAT—an international effort initiated during the most recent International

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Observations

Measuring Natural Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Alaska

The NASA CARVE and DOE NGEE-Arctic projects are combining airborne and ground-based campaigns to understand the importance of natural emissions from the Alaskan tundra. (Source: J. B. Curtis, LBNL [main photo and left inset]; S. Wullschleger, ORNL [right

In addition to emissions from human activities, natural emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane can affect the climate system, and vice versa. Quantifying these natural fluxes, especially in Arctic ecosystems, is critical to understanding how they may interact with human-driven changes to affect future climate. Some research has shown increased emissions of greenhouse gases from tundra and boreal forests during warming in the spring, but little is known about what causes this or whether its occurrence is widespread enough to influence

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Arctic

Predicting Changes in Arctic Sea Ice

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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Observations, Modeling, Water Resources, Land Use & Land Cover, Agriculture & Food, Extreme Events

Mapping Fallowed Farmland During Drought

The greenness of croplands in January is shown relative to the 13-year average from NASA MODIS records. Satellite imagery can be a powerful tool for understanding the impacts of drought on agricultural lands. (Source: NIDIS Newsletter, April 2014)

The severe, sustained drought affecting the Central Valley of California has caused a shortage of water for irrigation and crop production. The effect of this shortage is most immediately evident as an increase in the extent of fallowed farmland (or land taken out of agricultural production), which in turn serves as a proxy for socioeconomic impacts. Decision makers can use information about fallowed land to better understand the severity of drought impacts and to support requests for USDA drought disaster designations or emergency proclamations. USDA

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Water Resources

Building Capacity Among Water Resource Managers

In the Southwest, reservoirs such as Lake Powell (above) have reached record-low levels in recent periods of drought. Training for water resource managers is an essential step in preparing for hydrologic extremes in a changing climate.

Climate change presents new challenges for managing water quality and quantity, particularly in areas where water resources are already stressed. Resource managers need scientifically sound, usable information and training to deal with changing patterns of water extremes and other climate-related issues facing the water sector.

To help meet this need, USACE and DOI’s Bureau of Reclamation have developed a training series titled Assessing Natural

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Energy

Understanding Risks and Opportunities for the Energy Sector

Future scenarios of natural gas supply and demand (top left) are generated using an integrated assessment model. This information serves as input (open arrow) to an infrastructure model, which projects required pipeline growth, new storage needs, and othe

The Nation’s energy infrastructure is vulnerable to a range of climate impacts, particularly in areas prone to severe storms or water shortages. These impacts may be exacerbated or mitigated by other systemic factors, such as increasing energy demands, infrastructure interdependencies, and changes in technology, demographics, land use and land cover, and regional industries and economies. Although existing models can capture some of these factors, there is a growing need for modeling frameworks and tools that can explore their collective behaviors. 

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