Atmospheric composition and circulation over the tropical western Pacific Ocean play important roles in the Earth’s climate system. In this remote region, rising air heated by some of the warmest seawater in the world moves gases produced by ocean organisms and other chemicals to higher altitudes, where water vapor and ozone exert their strongest influence on the climate. As the climate warms, the intensity of this transport mechanism will increase and may contribute to large-scale changes in atmospheric composition. Details of these dynamics, including how they vary over time and space,...

Northern peatlands contain vast organic carbon stocks in danger of release into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases as the climate warms, leading to a positive-feedback cycle of further warming and carbon release. Through field experiments in a Minnesota peat bog, DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the USDA Forest Service (USDA-FS), and EPA are collaborating alongside university partners to test how peatland ecosystems respond to conditions that simulate the atmosphere of the future, and improve the ability to predict the release of stored carbon and its impact on climate warming. The...

As climate change increasingly impacts society and ecosystems, demand for reliable information about climate conditions now and in the future is growing. Climate research is conducted by two distinct communities, one working on climate forecasts for the near-term future and the other on climate-change projections over decades to centuries. Despite these different foci, the boundaries between these two communities increasingly overlap, and they share many common methods and challenges. Enhanced collaboration across modeling centers and communities can help create more valuable climate-...

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...