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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.
A new tool makes satellite data on field conditions available to producers.
Soil moisture data are used to plan crop planting, forecast yields, track droughts or floods, and improve weather forecasts, and can also be used to track changing conditions for U.S. agriculture over time. A new tool developed by USDA makes soil moisture data from NASA available to farmers, researchers, and other users.
The Crop-CASMA (Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics) tool uses high-resolution...
Satellite data products are helping land managers quickly evaluate the health of vulnerable coastal wetlands.
Salt marshes protect communities and infrastructure from storms, filter pollution, and provide habitat for fish and shellfish. These coastal wetlands and the ecosystem services they provide are increasingly threatened by rising sea levels, erosion, and land use change, and land and resource managers need tools to track changes and trends in their health and extent. Satellite data products provide one method for quickly evaluating marsh vulnerability to environmental...
Researchers used interagency modeling and observational capabilities to understand the impacts of reduced pollution related to the COVID-19 pandemic on Earth’s energy balance.
Lockdown measures enacted to control the spread of COVID-19 led to a worldwide reduction in emissions of tiny atmospheric particles known as aerosols. Through their interactions with solar energy and clouds, aerosols play a significant role in shaping Earth’s energy balance (or the balance between incoming energy from the sun and outgoing energy from the Earth) and climate that is still inadequately...
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...
Recent studies are improving the ability to quantify ecosystem carbon dynamics and greenhouse gas exchange in changing Arctic and boreal landscapes.
Northern high latitudes are warming at more than twice the global average, driving permafrost thaw, changes in surface water extent, increased wildfire, and other changes that affect how much carbon is stored in and emitted to the atmosphere by soils, vegetation, and inland waters.[1] Measuring the flow of carbon between ecosystems, landscapes, and the...
An interagency field campaign gathered data on interactions between the tropical ocean and atmosphere to improve weather and climate prediction.
Over the tropical ocean, interactions between winds and warm sea water form low-hanging clouds (known as shallow convective clouds) that act as the building blocks for storms. These clouds and air–sea interactions influence weather and climate conditions all over the world, but are poorly represented in models, in part due to a lack of detailed observations that are needed to understand and accurately simulate their behavior. In...
A multiyear observing campaign is tracking changing snowpack in the western United States, laying the groundwork for a future snow satellite mission.
Snowpack plays a critical role in the water cycle and helps regulate Earth’s climate. Storage of snow in the winter feeds spring snowmelt, bringing water to crops, people, and ecosystems downstream. Snowpack also feeds hydropower generation in the Southwest and Northwest, and snow-related tourism and recreation are important...
New ocean sensors will expand the ability of the global Argo Program to monitor and forecast changes in ocean chemistry and marine ecosystem health.
The international Argo Program maintains a global fleet of nearly 4,000 ocean floats that help scientists understand how the ocean is changing over time. Underwater sensors provide data on trends related to climate change, including ocean temperature and heat content, salinity and freshwater content, sea level, and large-scale ocean circulation. Now, the program is innovating...
Interagency observations and analyses show that emissions of the second-most important ozone-depleting substance are back on the decline after a recent surge.
Atmospheric measurements show that concentrations of ozone-depleting gases are declining in response to global controls on their production and use enacted under the Montreal Protocol of 1987 and its amendments. The decline since the early 1990s in the atmospheric concentration of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11), once widely used as a foaming agent and refrigerant, has been an important component of ozone layer...