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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.

Modeling, Extreme Events

Improving precipitation prediction

A satellite captures an atmospheric river from space. The white, banding plumes stretch across the Pacific and make landfall on the U.S. West Coast, with the curvature of Earth still in frame.

Collaboration across modeling, observational, and process research communities aims to improve how models represent and predict precipitation.

Many extreme events and related impacts are associated with the intensity, duration, and frequency of precipitation, including drought, flooding, wildfire, and severe storms. Understanding when, where, and how much precipitation will fall can help decision-makers and planners in agriculture, emergency management, energy, and other sectors prepare for and reduce costs from potential impacts. While models are skilled at simulating...

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Data & Tools, Modeling, Human Health

Informing heat health decisions

A heat health forecast tool aims to help communities better prepare for and respond to extreme heat events.

The CCHHG, led by NOAA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with input from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies, developed a Climate and Health Monitor and Outlook Heat Forecast Product for the continental United States based on NOAA seasonal forecasts. The heat health forecast tool displays the rate of heat-related illness by region for a given week and is designed to help communities better prepare for and...

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Physical Climate, Observations, Modeling

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

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...

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Observations, Modeling

Updating a high-resolution reconstruction of the global climate

A depiction of the low pressure center of a hurricane approaching the coastline.

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...

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Modeling, Extreme Events

Developing a new seasonal-to-decadal climate prediction system

A next-generation modeling system supports assessment of changing climate risks.

NOAA, the USGS, and Princeton University scientists contributed to the development of a new modeling system for seasonal-to-multidecadal climate predictions and projections, SPEAR (Seamless System for Prediction and Earth System Research), at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.[1] SPEAR combines a set of newly developed components that...

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Modeling

Modeling efforts drive advances in projections of future climate change

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...

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Modeling, Carbon Cycle, Arctic

Scientists investigate the effects of carbon emissions from thawing permafrost soils

Methane emitted from thawing permafrost below an Arctic thermokarst lake is trapped in bubbles of many different sizes and shapes as the ice grows during the winter.
Long-frozen northern soils known as permafrost contain one of the world’s largest stores of organic carbon. This reservoir is stable while soils are frozen, but as permafrost thaws, decomposition of biomass by microbes produces the heat-trapping gases carbon dioxide and methane, returning soil carbon to the atmosphere where it contributes to climate change. Permafrost carbon stores are expected to be increasingly vulnerable to decomposition as the climate continues to change, leading to a feedback cycle of further warming and permafrost thaw.[1]...
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Modeling

Collaborative modeling experiments to improve understanding of the future of the Earth system

Coordinated experiments run across major Earth system models help improve model projections and advance climate science understanding.

Projections of the future state of the Earth system can differ significantly across models, with various potential sources of uncertainty. To better understand the sources of difference and where fundamental scientific understanding can be improved, the Earth system modeling community uses a set of experiments run across many models known as the ...

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Modeling

Exploring human and natural influences on climate

Model runs of CMIP5 models without greenhouse gas forcing (orange lines) demonstrate natural variability in average annual global surface temperatures expected without human influence on the climate.

Earth system models allow researchers to evaluate the size and strength of various influences on the climate system and identify the human contribution to the warming trend.  

Earth system models allow researchers to distinguish “internal” climate variability (natural climate cycles) from the effects of “external” influences on the climate, both human and natural (including variations in incoming solar energy, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gas emissions from human activities). Model simulations of natural variability from the...

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Physical Climate, Modeling, Arctic

Advancing seasonal predictions of Arctic sea ice

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...

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