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.

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...

Scientists lower an array of instruments into the ocean from the side of their research vessel.

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 researcher launches a radiosonde instrument attached to a weather balloon to capture detailed atmospheric data.

The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is the stormiest place on Earth, marked by heavy cloud cover that helps determine how much of the sun’s energy reaches Earth’s surface. Due in part to the scarcity of field data from the region, current climate models have difficulty reproducing the behavior of clouds over the Southern Ocean, which in turn affects how well they can simulate current and future climate. Motivated by these data limitations, an international multi-agency effort collected atmospheric and oceanographic data via ship-, aircraft-, and island-based instrumentation in a...

Regional comparisons of submarine (1958–1976 and 1993–1997), ICESat (2003–2007), and CryoSat-2 (2011–2016) ice thickness data, showing declines in ice thickness over time.

Satellite observations of sea ice thickness provide an opportunity to improve seasonal predictions of Arctic sea ice cover.

Arctic sea ice grows and melts each year with the seasons, reaching its low point in September. Summer sea ice cover has shrunk significantly over the past thirty years, although variation from year to year means that the downward trend is not uniform. Arctic sea ice plays a critical role in regulating weather and climate in and beyond the region. Sea ice decline activates a feedback loop in the climate system: as highly...

Forecasts of ocean surface current velocity in the Pacific Ocean off of Baja California generated in part using in-situ observations from NOAA’s Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO)

Upgrades to an observing network in the equatorial Pacific Ocean support valuable forecasts of global shifts in climate and extreme weather.

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a natural climate phenomenon driven in part by the variability of ocean surface temperatures, atmospheric pressure, and trade winds in the tropical Pacific Ocean. ENSO events, occurring every two to seven years on average, cause widespread shifts in precipitation patterns and weather and climate

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Modeling efforts provide new data on the effects of climate change in Antarctica.

Between 1998 and 2016, warming in Antarctica has been rapid and significant. Recent observations also reveal increases in snowfall in western Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica that are unprecedented over the past two millennia. To investigate these changes, a team of NSF-sponsored researchers and NASA scientists merged observation-based NSF-funded research with global modeling efforts that benefited from NASA satellite and airborne-based data^[1]...

Much of the precipitation along the U.S. West Coast is delivered by phenomena known as “atmospheric rivers”—narrow bands of moist air that may extend for thousands of miles across regions outside of the tropics, and play a critical role in regional water supply and storm activity. Atmospheric-river events play a beneficial role in building up Western water supply and snowpack but are also the source of a large majority of floods in the region. Many uncertainties about key processes that affect storm development...

Modeled (top panel) and observed (bottom two panels) changes in atmospheric aerosol loads between 1980 and 2000. A decrease over Europe and North Amer- ica (blue) and an increase over southeastern and eastern Asia (red)—evident in all three panels—contrib

Pollution from the combustion of fossil fuels and wood has contributed to climate change in complex ways, with some pollutants causing cooling and others causing warming, accompanied by effects on patterns of atmospheric circulation and precipitation. To better understand these complex relationships, the Atmospheric Chemistry Climate Model Intercomparison Project, part of the international 5th-phase Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), conducted a series of pollution-focused modeling experiments to reveal spatial patterns, sectoral influences,

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Highlights

Measuring the atmospheric impacts of COVID-19-related emissions reductions

Understanding air–sea processes

Unprecedented observations in the Southern Ocean help improve global climate models

Advancing seasonal predictions of Arctic sea ice

Strengthening critical observations of the tropical ocean and atmosphere

Modeling ice sheet change in Antarctica

Understanding Atmospheric Rivers and West Coast Precipitation

Modeling Pollution to Understand Localized Climate Trends