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Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan (2004)

Chapter: Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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Appendixes

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

Preface

On September 17, 2002, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere James R. Mahoney wrote to Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, to request that the National Academies undertake a fast-track review of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program’s (CCSP’s) draft strategic plan for climate and global change studies. The letter (see Appendix D) asked the National Academies to form a committee to review both the discussion draft of the strategic plan and the final strategic plan after it has been revised. The letter also requested that the National Academies examine the CCSP’s strategic planning process, focusing on the program’s efforts to solicit input from the scientific and stakeholder communities between November 2002 and January 2003. In response the 17-member Committee to Review the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan (see Appendix B for committee biographies) was formed. This report is the committee’s assessment of the discussion draft strategic plan dated November 11, 2002 and addresses phase I of the committee’s statement of task (see Box P-1). A second report by this committee will review the final strategic plan after it has been released, addressing phase II of the committee’s task (see Appendix B).

A challenging aspect of the committee’s work has been to come to a clear understanding and agreement about the intended scope of the CCSP; that is, does the program focus exclusively on issues of “climate change”—as one might infer from the name of the Climate Change Science Program itself and its constituent, the Climate Change Research Initiative—or does it encompass all, or some, other global changes—as one might infer from the name of the CCSP’s other constituent, the U.S. Global Change Research Program? While climate change has clearly been the major focus of past work by the GCRP and current work of the CCSP, the answer to this question has implications for the program’s future. Specifically, it will determine which research areas belong in the program and, accordingly, the level of resources needed. In terms of the committee’s work the answer to this question has a profound effect on how the committee responds to its task statement, in particular, to the question, “Is the plan responsive to the nation’s needs for information on climate change and global change, their potential implications, and comparisons of the potential effects of different response options?”

The natural place to look for insights on this question was the draft strategic plan itself, which clearly indicates that the program is not designed to focus exclusively on climate change issues. For example, the title of the introductory chapter is “Climate and Global Change: Improving Connections Between Science and Society,” and two of the five “climate and global change issues” to be informed by the program explicitly mention global changes other than climate change.5 What is not clear in the draft plan is whether the program is designed to address all or some subset of issues pertaining to global change. As discussed in Chapter 2 of this report, part of the problem is that the draft strategic plan does not present a clear, concise statement of vision for the program.

Without that clear vision the committee developed its own working understanding of the intended scope of the CCSP. The committee believes that it will be important for the CCSP to consider those processes (1) that interact with climate change to produce significant impacts of societal relevance and therefore must be integrated into research to understand impacts and to develop adaptation and mitigation approaches, and (2) that have large feedbacks to climate change. In this report the committee uses the term “climate and associated global changes” as a general term encompassing those global changes included in the two categories above.

The CCSP will need to consider whether these or other criteria will determine the program’s coverage of various global change processes. This is important from a planning perspective because the number of factors identified for CCSP’s attention is likely to grow as the program’s work with decision makers expands. Many decision makers deal with climate change as only one of a suite of factors affecting the people, economy, and ecosystems of an area. Not all of these factors will necessarily be appropriate for the CCSP’s attention. An obvious tradeoff will be between depth and breadth, and the risk is a program spread so thin that it fails to make meaningful progress in core research areas. The CCSP’s decisions about scope will have important implications for the portfolio of research to be funded initially, and for how this portfolio evolves over the program’s lifetime.

5  

In particular, “How much have climate and other aspects of the Earth system changed since the industrial revolution…?” and “What is the sensitivity of natural and managed ecosystems to climate and other global changes” (CCSP, 2002, p. 4-5, emphasis added).

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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The committee was asked to review the draft strategic plan by focusing on nine questions (see Box P-1). Five of the first six questions, which apply to the draft strategic plan as a whole, are addressed in Part I of this report. The last three questions, which apply to each major section of the plan, are addressed in Part II of this report.

The third question in the statement of task (“Is there an appropriate balance (1) between short-term (2-5 years) and longer-term goals, (2) among substantive research areas, and (3) between research and nonresearch activities, such as observations, modeling, and communicating results?”) is not addressed explicitly in this report. One way to assess these elements of balance would be through budget data accompanied by cost estimates for the underpinnings of individual research components (e.g., supercomputers, satellite instruments, socio-economic surveys) and categorized as in the task statement (e.g., short-term versus longer-term, research versus nonresearch). The draft strategic plan does not include such data, nor was it possible for the committee or the CCSP to generate it in the time available. Even if available, these data would reflect only the current balance of the program and not the future directions outlined in the draft plan (e.g., whether new activities, such as those in decision support, applied climate modeling, and land-use and land-cover change, will be supported through new funding or by redirecting funds currently devoted to other research areas). The fiscal year 2004 budget request for the CCSP provides some insights into the CCSP’s plans for the program, but it also was not available in time for detailed analysis at the time this report was written. Another way to assess issues of balance would be from clearly stated program goals and priorities, which are not well articulated in the draft. Therefore, the committee was not able to evaluate the balance of the plan in a detailed way. Chapter 3 of this report provides some insights on balance issues by identifying elements of the draft plan that are appropriate short-term and longer-term objectives, and by pointing out areas needing additional research. The committee will address the balance question in its second report, when the draft has been revised and relevant budget data are available.

This report is not the only mechanism through which the CCSP has received input on the draft strategic plan. On December 3-5, 2002, the CCSP held a major workshop in Washington, D.C., to obtain input from scientific and other stakeholder communities. The workshop was attended by over 1000 scientists, agency representatives, and other stakeholders who participated in breakout sessions focused generally on the strategic plan chapters and selected crosscutting themes (see <http://www.climatescience.gov/events/workshop2002/>). In the second phase of this study the committee will assess the effectiveness of this workshop as a mechanism for gathering scientists’ and other stakeholder’s comments on the draft plan, as directed in the statement of task. The CCSP also provided a mechanism for interested parties to submit written comments on the draft strategic plan. The committee was able to examine comments received by the CCSP before its last meeting on January 8-10, 2003, and this report is written in light of those viewpoints.

The committee held three meetings to gather information and prepare this report. The first meeting was held on November 22, 2002, in Washington, D.C. At this meeting James R. Mahoney and Richard Moss, executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, presented an overview of the draft strategic plan and the strategic planning process. Representatives from participating departments and agencies also discussed with the committee their agency’s strategic planning process and how their agency’s research relates to the CCSP program. We thank the following individuals who participated in this meeting: James R. Mahoney, U.S. Climate Change Science Program; Richard Moss, U.S. Global Change Research Program; Mary Glackin, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Jack Kaye, National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Jerry Elwood, Department of Energy; Ari Patrinos, Department of Energy; Michael Slimak, Environmental Protection Agency; Steve Shafer, Department of Agriculture; Daniel Reifsnyder, Department of State; Harlan Watson, Department of State; Martha Garcia, U.S. Geological Survey; James Andrews, Office of Naval Research; Karrigan Bork, Department of Transportation.

Members of the committee attended the CCSP planning workshop on December 3-5, 2002, and then held a second meeting in Washington, D.C., on December 6, 2002. At this meeting the committee discussed the CCSP workshop and began to develop this report. In addition Robert Marlay, director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and Technology Policy Analysis, briefed the committee on the Climate Change Technology Program. The committee’s third meeting was held on January 8-10, 2003, during which the committee prepared this report.

The committee called upon a number of National Academies’ boards and standing committees with expertise in issues of climate and global change. In the short period of time available these boards and standing committees and their staffs produced very thoughtful summaries of the strengths and weaknesses of the draft strategic plan. The committee acknowledges the efforts of the following individuals who took the lead in preparing the materials on behalf of these units:

  • Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate: Eric Barron, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and Amanda Staudt, National Research Council (NRC) staff;

  • Ocean Studies Board: Jay McCreary, University of Hawaii, Manoa, and Morgan Gopnik, NRC staff;

  • Polar Research Board: Richard Alley, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and Chris Elfring, NRC staff;

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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  • Climate Research Committee: Tony Busalacchi, University of Maryland, College Park, and Amanda Staudt, NRC staff;

  • Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change: Tom Dietz, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, Tom Wilbanks, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, and Paul Stern, NRC staff; and

  • Committee on Earth Studies: Michael Freilich, Oregon State University, Corvallis, and Arthur Charo, NRC staff.

The committee also received comments on the draft plan from several members of the Committee on Geophysical and Environmental Data and its staff director, Anne Linn. The contributions from these boards and committees were extremely useful in informing the committee’s deliberations. Though these individuals provided many useful insights and suggestions, many of which are reflected in the report, they did not participate in the committee’s closed session discussions and are not responsible for the final content of this report.

This study differs from most National Academies studies in three respects. First, the timeline for this first report was limited—approximately three months from the committee’s first meeting to the deadline for delivery of this report. This timeline was driven by the CCSP’s ambitious push to publish a final plan by the end of April 2003. Second, the committee was asked to review both a preliminary draft of the strategic plan and the final strategic plan, enabling the committee to provide advice at a stage in the strategic planning process when it could be most useful. Third, as discussed above, the CCSP convened a major workshop and solicited public comments on the draft plan while the study was underway. As a result, a number of the issues raised in this report have already been brought to the attention of CCSP leadership and recognized by them (see <http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/workshop2002/closingsession>).

The committee gratefully acknowledges the NRC staff who worked hard to facilitate its deliberations and the preparation of this report. Gregory Symmes and Amanda Staudt made major contributions to the report, at considerable personal sacrifice. Kristen Krapf was instrumental in coordinating input to the report from the committee and the NRC boards and committees. Byron Mason and Elizabeth Galinis were an extremely effective team in ensuring that the committee’s meetings and report production went smoothly.

The committee has worked diligently to make this report as useful as possible to the CCSP. We wish the CCSP leadership well as it takes on the challenging task of revising the draft strategic plan to enhance the usefulness of the program to the decision makers who need to better understand the potential impacts of climate change and make choices among possible responses. In the opinion of many of the committee members the issues addressed by the CCSP are among the most crucial of those facing humankind in the twenty-first century.

Thomas E. Graedel, Chair

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

BOX P-1 STATEMENT OF TASK FOR PHASE I

An ad hoc committee will conduct an independent review of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program’s strategic plan for global change and climate change studies, giving attention also to the program’s strategic planning process. This review will be carried out in two phases.

Phase I

In the first phase, the committee will review the discussion draft of the plan. The review will address the following questions about the draft plan as a whole:

  • Is the plan responsive to the nation’s needs for information on climate change and global change, their potential implications, and comparisons of the potential effects of different response options?

  • Are the goals clear and appropriate?

  • Is there an appropriate balance (1) between short-term (2-5 years) and longer-term goals, (2) among substantive research areas, and (3) between research and nonresearch activities, such as observations, modeling, and communicating results?

  • Are mechanisms for coordinating and integrating issues that involve multiple disciplines and multiple agencies adequately described?

  • Does the plan adequately describe the roles of the public, private sector, academia, state/local governments, and international communities, and linkages among these communities?

  • Does the written document describing the program effectively communicate with both stakeholders and the scientific community? Is the question format for driving the research program effective?

The review also will address the following questions for each of the plan’s major topical areas:

  • Does the plan reflect current scientific and technical understanding?

  • Are the specific objectives clear and appropriate?

  • Are expected results and deliverables (and their timelines) realistic given the available resources?

In its review, the committee will consider the scientific and stakeholder community comments at the U.S. Climate Change Science Program’s workshop and other comments received by the program during the public comment period. If time permits, the committee also will comment on any significant process issues related to the workshop that could affect how the program revises the draft plan. The results of phase I will be provided in a report to be delivered no later than February 28, 2003.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

Acknowledgments

This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:

James Anderson, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

D. James Baker, The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Roberta Balstad Miller, Columbia University, Palisades, New York

Christopher B. Field, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, California

Inez Fung, University of California, Berkeley

Gregory Greenwood, California Resources Agency, Sacramento

George M. Hornberger, University of Virginia, Charlottesville

Henry D. Jacoby, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

Charles F. Kennel, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California

Richard S. Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

Susanne C. Moser, Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Edward A. Parson, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

W. Richard Peltier, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Steven W. Running, University of Montana, Missoula

Edward S. Sarachik, University of Washington, Seattle

Christine S. Sloane, General Motors Corporation, Warren, Michigan

Susan Solomon, NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado

B.L. Turner, II, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts

Robert M. White, Washington Advisory Group, Washington, D.C.

Oran R. Young, University of California, Santa Barbara

Although the reviewers listed above have provided constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the report’s conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Richard M. Goody (Harvard University) and Robert A. Frosch (Harvard University). Appointed by the National Research Council, they were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

Executive Summary

For the last century human activities have been altering the global climate. Atmospheric abundances of the major anthropogenic greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and tropospheric ozone) reached their highest recorded levels at the end of the twentieth century and continue to rise. Major causes of this rise have been fossil fuel use, agriculture, and land-use change. Observations show that Earth’s surface warmed by approximately 0.6 °C (1.1 °F) over the twentieth century. This warming has been attributed in large part to increasing abundances of greenhouse gases, though it is difficult to quantify this contribution against the backdrop of natural variability and climate forcing uncertainties. The emerging impacts of this change on natural systems include melting glaciers and ice caps, sea level rise, extended growing seasons, and changes in the geographical distributions of plant and animal species. Because the Earth system responds so slowly to changes in greenhouse gas levels, and because altering established energy-use practices is difficult, changes and impacts attributable to these factors will continue during the twenty-first century and beyond. Uncertainties remain about the magnitude and impacts of future climate change, largely due to gaps in understanding of climate science and the socio-economic drivers of climate change.

Research to understand how the climate system might be changing, and in turn affecting other natural systems and human society, has been underway for more than a decade. Significant advancement in understanding has resulted from this research, but there are still many unanswered questions, necessitating a continuance of this effort. As society faces increasing pressure to decide how best to respond to climate change and associated global changes, there is a need to focus at least part of this effort on more applied research in direct support of decision making. In particular, research efforts are needed to explore response options and evaluate the costs and benefits of adaptation and mitigation.

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) was formed in 2002 to coordinate and direct U.S. efforts in climate change and global change research. The CCSP builds upon the decade-old U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP). Since its inception the GCRP has reported hundreds of scientific accomplishments and, together with other major international partners and programs, has been responsible for improving the understanding of climate change and associated global changes. The CCSP incorporates the GCRP and adds a new component—the Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI)—whose primary goal is to “measurably improve the integration of scientific knowledge, including measures of uncertainty, into effective decision support systems and resources” (CCSP, 2002, p.15). A draft strategic plan for the CCSP was released to the scientific community and the public in November 2002. At the request of the CCSP, the National Academies formed a committee to review this draft strategic plan; the results of this review are reported herein. The committee’s statement of task can be found in Appendix E of this report.

STRENGTHS OF THE DRAFT CCSP STRATEGIC PLAN

The committee commends the CCSP for undertaking the challenging task of developing a strategic plan. The current draft of the plan represents a good start to the process, particularly in that it identifies some exciting new directions for the program while building on the well-established foundation of the GCRP. Further, the CCSP has made genuine overtures to researchers and the broader stakeholder community to gain feedback on the draft strategic plan and how to improve it. These efforts indicate a strong interest on the part of the CCSP in developing a plan that is consistent with current scientific thinking and is responsive to the nation’s needs for information on climate and associated global changes.

The CCRI portion of the plan introduces an admirable emphasis on the need for science to address national needs, including support for those in the public and private sectors whose decisions are affected by climate change and variability. For example, the discussion of applied climate modeling in the draft plan insightfully articulates a much-needed new direction for U.S. climate-change modeling, reaching out beyond the “business as usual” approach of the GCRP to provide tangible decision support resources, particularly tested and trusted projections (or “forecasts”) of future climate. The draft plan correctly identifies the need to enhance research on options for adaptation to climate change. In addition, the plan appropriately recognizes that there are some short-term products that can and should be delivered by the program.

The committee finds that the draft plan identifies many of the cutting-edge scientific research activities that are necessary to improve understanding of the Earth system. For example, the acceleration of research on aerosols and the carbon cycle is consistent with priorities of the scientific

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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community. Indeed, the GCRP portion of the plan clearly builds upon the substantial and largely successful research programs of the last decade. The call for greatly improved observational capabilities reflects a well recognized priority for increasing understanding of climate and associated global changes. Further, the plan takes positive steps towards improved interdisciplinary research opportunities. Overcoming the substantial hurdles associated with the highly interdisciplinary nature of research on climate and associated global changes will continue to be a fundamental challenge for the program.

In general, the draft plan provides a solid foundation for the CCSP. With suitable revisions, the plan could articulate an explicit and forward-looking vision for the CCSP and clearly identifiable pathways to successful implementation.

Recommendation: The draft plan should be substantially revised to: (1) clarify the vision and goals of the CCSP and the CCRI, (2) improve its treatment of program management, (3) fill key information needs, (4) enhance efforts to support decision making, and (5) set the stage for implementation.

CLARIFY VISION AND GOALS

The committee found that the draft strategic plan lacks the kind of clear and consistent guiding framework that would enable decision makers, the public, and scientists to clearly understand what this research program is intended to accomplish and how it will contribute to meeting the nation’s needs. The draft plan lacks most of the basic elements of a strategic plan: a guiding vision, executable goals, clear timetables and criteria for measuring progress, an assessment of whether existing programs are capable of meeting these goals, explicit prioritization, and a management plan. Many candidates for vision and goals are scattered throughout the draft strategic plan and in references to other documents, yet neither an explicitly stated vision nor a coherent set of goals are consistently presented. The draft plan lists a multitude of proposed activities, but does not identify which of these activities are higher priorities than others (either across the CCSP as a whole or within individual program areas of the CCRI or the GCRP) nor does it provide an explicit process for establishing such priorities. Finally, the plan lacks the kind of straightforward comparison of current programs to projected needs that will be essential to guide the plan’s implementation. A systematic and coherent strategic plan is especially necessary when, as in the CCSP, the institutional environment is diverse and fragmented and when the program involves new directions and collaborations. Such a plan would provide a common basis for planning, implementation, and evaluation and would protect against a continuation of the status quo.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should articulate a clear, concise vision statement for the program in the context of national needs. The vision should be specific, ambitious, and apply to the entire CCSP. The plan should translate this vision into a set of tangible goals, apply an explicit process to establish priorities, and include an effective management plan.

The revised strategic plan also must present clear and consistent goals for the CCRI. The draft plan states that to be included in the CCRI, a program must produce both significant decision or policy-relevant deliverables within two to four years and contribute significantly to one of the following activities: improve scientific understanding; optimize observations, monitoring, and data management systems; and develop decision support resources. The decision support activities described in Chapter 4 of the draft plan are generally consistent with the above criteria. In fact, the committee considers the CCRI’s emphasis on scientific support for decision makers one of the most promising and innovative features of the draft plan. Unfortunately, the plan’s descriptions of decision support as a two to four year activity give the false impression that decision support is needed only in the near-term. While short-term deliverables are possible in this arena, decision support also will be needed as an ongoing component of the program. In addition, many of the activities described in Chapters 2 and 3 of the draft plan are not consistent with the CCRI focus on decision support and are not likely to produce deliverables within four years. This is not to say that these activities are unimportant, but simply that they are not consistent with the goals for CCRI as given in the draft plan. The committee believes that it is important for the program to correct these inconsistencies while maintaining a strong emphasis on near-term, ongoing decision support in the CCRI. The revised strategic plan also needs to describe more clearly how the research activities included in the GCRP support the decision support needs of the CCRI. Indeed, there should be a “rolling linkage” between the two programs, with CCRI objectives periodically redefined as a result of new scientific input from the GCRP.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should: (1) present clear goals for the CCRI and ensure that its activities are consistent with these goals; (2) maintain CCRI’s strong emphasis on support for near-term decisions as an ongoing component of the program; and (3) include an explicit mechanism to link GCRP and CCRI activities.

IMPROVE PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

The management of an interagency program involving 13 agencies, each with a separate mission and a long history

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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of independent research on climate and associated global changes, is a challenging task. The GCRP has been criticized in the past for being unable to do much beyond encouraging multi-agency cooperation and support because it lacked the authority to redirect long standing programs and mandates of individual agencies. The creation of a cabinet-level committee with the authority to shift resources among agencies to meet the goals of the CCSP is an improvement over past approaches to managing the GCRP. However, the interagency approach to managing the program may not be enough to ensure that agencies cooperate toward the common goals of the CCSP because no individual is clearly identified in the draft plan as having responsibility for managing the program as a whole.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should describe the management processes to be used to foster agency cooperation toward common CCSP goals. The revised plan also should clearly describe the responsibilities of the CCSP leadership.

The plan does not describe the responsibilities and authorities of contributing agencies, such as which agencies will be responsible for implementing the work. Defining responsibilities is particularly important for new areas of research that have not been significant program elements of the GCRP in the past, such as land-use and land-cover change and decision support. It is also important for crosscutting research elements, notably water cycle and ecosystems research, which are carried out within multiple agencies. Another management challenge for the CCSP is to foster the participation of mission-oriented agencies in the strategic planning process. The committee believes that mission-oriented agencies—such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, water resources and land management agencies within Department of the Interior, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the extension and farm program agencies within U.S. Department of Agriculture—could make important contributions to identifying research needs, collaborating on research problems, and testing research and modeling results.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should more clearly outline agency responsibilities for implementing the research. In addition, the CCSP should encourage participation of those agencies whose research or operational responsibilities would strengthen the ability of the program to deliver products that serve national needs.

The Climate Change Technology Program (CCTP) is an interagency program parallel to the CCSP and created to coordinate and develop technologies for stabilizing and reducing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. The committee is concerned that the existing management and program links between the CCSP and the CCTP may not be extensive enough to take advantage of the synergies between these two programs. This may be due in part to the CCTP’s early stage of development. Generally speaking, a program to define and understand a massive problem (i.e., the CCSP) and a program to develop options for solution to the problem (i.e., the CCTP) should be guided by a common strategy. At the very least the results from each program should be used as extensive guidance for the project portfolio of the other. For example, technology options should be pursued for the highest-risk problems and informed by the most robust knowledge of those problems. Likewise, the global change effects of implementation of various solutions (e.g., sequestration impacts) should be identified and studied as an integral part of technology programs.

Recommendation: The CCSP should assess the scientific implications of technologies under consideration by the CCTP and develop realistic scenarios for climate and associated global changes with these technologies in mind. The program management chapter of the revised CCSP strategic plan should clearly describe mechanisms for coordinating and linking its activities with the technology development activities of the CCTP.

The plan currently describes scientific planning committees that will be composed of independent experts to help the agencies plan specific program elements, as has been done for the carbon cycle, the water cycle, climate observations, climate modeling, and elsewhere. The committee supports this approach. Nonetheless, the committee believes that the most difficult research management challenges will occur at the level of the CCSP program itself. Scientific and other stakeholder guidance will be needed for the whole program to establish and communicate clear priorities, evaluate progress toward meeting the overarching goals, and ensure that the inevitable trade-offs in resources and allocation of time are done so as to meet the overall program goals. Otherwise, the individual needs and priorities of the agencies will tend to take precedence over the needs of the entire program.

Recommendation: The CCSP should establish a standing advisory body charged with independent oversight of the entire program.

FILL KEY INFORMATION NEEDS

The committee identified several weaknesses in the draft strategic plan that need to be addressed if the CCSP is to meet the nation’s needs for information on climate and associated global changes. First, there is now a strong need to augment the GCRP research of the last decade, which focused on national- to global-scale phenomena, with research that applies an understanding of the global scale to developing an understanding of the variability and change

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

unique to regional scales. Such information would be useful to international, federal, state, and local decision makers facing environmental problems, including drought, flooding, or other climate impacts. Insufficient detail is provided in the draft plan about how current work on large-scale climate models will be adapted and combined with information to address regional issues and seasonal-to-interannual timeframes. Particularly important and challenging will be analyses and modeling of future regional climate and related effects on social, economic, and ecological issues. The need to develop regional research products is not adequately emphasized throughout the strategic plan or integrated through all program elements.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should more fully describe how models and knowledge that support regional decision making and place-based science will be developed.

The next decade of research must also support an increase in understanding the potential impacts of climate change on human societies and ecosystems, and related options for adaptation and mitigation. The need for research and applications in these areas logically follows from the CCSP’s new emphasis on decision support. The plan’s treatment of human dimensions and ecosystems, however, has several important gaps. It lacks research into consumption, institutions, and social aspects of technology as causes of climate and associated global changes. Further, the draft plan does not propose any research into the costs and benefits of climate change and related response options. Finally, the research plan for ecosystems needs a more cohesive and strategic organizational framework that places a clear priority on predicting ecosystem impacts and on providing the scientific foundation for possible actions and policies to minimize deleterious effects and optimize future outcomes. The committee finds that, while the draft strategic plan does address these topics to some extent, its coverage is insufficient to provide adequate input into the models and analyses necessary to reduce or clarify uncertainties, or to meet current and anticipated needs of decision makers.

Recommendation: The revised plan should strengthen its approach to the human, economic, and ecological dimensions of climate and associated global changes to ensure it supports the research necessary to project and monitor societal and ecosystem impacts, to design adaptation and mitigation strategies, and to understand the costs and benefits of climate change and related response options.

The draft strategic plan does a better job of identifying links between chapters and crosscutting themes than in the past, but, overall, the coordination among many individual program components is poor. Examples include the generally weak integration of the human dimensions, ecosystems, and water cycle issues across the plan; the nearly complete disconnect among the atmospheric composition, ecology, and land-use and land-cover chapters; and the uneven consideration of the role of the ocean in climate. The draft plan also does not adequately consider the interactions and synergies of climate change with other global changes. Climate change operates in concert with other significant changes, such as those related to land-use dynamics and hydrological cycles. Therefore, most scientists and decision makers typically do not find themselves dealing with climate change in isolation but rather as one of many factors affecting the people, economy, and ecosystems of an area.

Recommendation: The CCSP should strengthen the treatment and integration of crosscutting research areas in all substantive chapters. The revised strategic plan should address the interactions and synergies of climate change with other associated global changes.

The draft plan makes repeated reference to the global climate observing system, and yet to date the system is only a patchwork of observational networks maintained by various agencies within the United States and by other nations. Careful planning and major investments are needed to maintain and expand an integrated observing system that will support monitoring and modeling of climate and associated global changes. A critical weakness in the draft plan is that it does not adequately explain how existing observation systems will be integrated with a plan for expansion of them to add key climate-related ecological, biogeochemical, geophysical, and environmentally relevant socio-economic measurements. Especially for systematic integrated measurements, interagency and international cooperation could bring major advances. An integrated global climate observing system should also have a plan to make scientific products widely available in useful formats for climate-system researchers and for decision makers, to ensure continuity of observations, and to accommodate flexibility in response to changing scientific questions and societal needs.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should better describe a strategic program for achieving an integrated observing system for detecting and understanding climate variability and change and associated global changes on scales from regional to global.

The committee believes that the draft plan misses an opportunity to develop a forward-looking strategy for improving international research and observation networks, exchanges of knowledge, and joint assessments. There is little discussion in the draft plan of how and whether the CCSP will participate in such international efforts. The overall sense of insularity in the plan could hinder efforts to

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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improve linkages with the international community. International collaboration is especially valuable for building better in situ calibration and validation of satellite observations, for obtaining more globally distributed measurements, and for building synergy and reducing redundancy in the deployment of observation assets. Scientifically, there is a danger that the emphasis on U.S. issues and resources in the plan will result in agencies choosing not to work in geographic regions outside the United States that are significant for understanding particularly important processes.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should clearly describe how the CCSP will contribute to and benefit from international research collaborations and assessments.

A manifestation of the general insularity of the draft plan is that it fails to place sufficient weight on the need for the global and long-term historical context in observing, understanding, modeling, and responding to climate variability and change. This lack of context is not consistent with the global and long time-scale research perspectives of many climate scientists. The plan does not take into account, for example, how climate variability and change in North America is influenced by global variability involving the land surface, atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere in regions remote to North America. A better presentation in the plan of the time and space scales associated with climate change also would point to the value of paleoclimate data as a descriptor of past natural variability.

Recommendation: The global and long-term historical context of climate change and variability should receive greater emphasis in the revised strategic plan.

STRENGTHEN DECISION SUPPORT CAPABILITY

The committee views the definition and development of decision support resources as a critical short-term goal of the CCSP. Although the draft strategic plan has incorporated general language about decision support in many places, it is vague about what this will actually mean. The draft plan fails to adequately distinguish between research to develop new decision support tools and understanding on the one hand, and operational decision support activities, on the other. It then does not successfully identify state-of-the-art undertakings in both. A significant problem with the draft plan is that an explicit connection to decision-making problems—both anticipated decision-making needs and past experiences—is absent. Indeed, the plan does not recognize the full diversity of decision makers and does not describe mechanisms for two-way communication with stakeholders.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should identify which categories of decision makers the CCSP serves and describe how the program will improve two-way communication with them. The revised plan also should better describe how decision support capabilities will be developed and how these efforts will link with and inform the program’s research to improve understanding of climate and associated global changes.

The draft strategic plan’s description of applied climate modeling is quite insightful, reasonably well focused, and well grounded with respect to the priorities for climate modeling research and applications over the next decade. Even so, the treatment of this topic does not adequately address several substantial challenges to meeting the ambitious goals it sets forward: (1) the optimistic, and likely unrealistic, objective of fully understanding cloud feedbacks and therefore significantly reducing climate sensitivity uncertainties within two to four years; (2) the challenge of making connections between the applied climate modeling results and the climate-impacts research community, and on to policy makers, resource managers, and other consumers of climate-change information; (3) how the current modeling community’s efforts will support multiple objectives (e.g., producing scenarios for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reducing climate sensitivity, evaluating regional impacts); (4) the lack of new resources to build the needed supercomputing and human resource capacity; and (5) the limitations of existing observation records for testing models.

Recommendation: The discussion of applied climate modeling should be revised to better describe how models will be incorporated into the broader suite of decision support activities and to better address the key challenges to attaining the applied climate modeling goals set forward in the plan.

The draft strategic plan identifies the reduction of uncertainty as a top priority for the CCSP and the CCRI. It recognizes three important points about uncertainty: (1) uncertainty is inherent in science and decision making and therefore not in itself a basis for inaction; (2) decision makers need to be well informed about uncertainty so that decisions can be made more knowledgeably; and (3) accelerated research should focus on those uncertainties that are important for informing policy and decision making. Unfortunately, having recognized these principles of decision making under uncertainty, the draft plan does not apply a systematic process to identify the key scientific uncertainties and to ascertain which of those are most important to decision makers. Thus, the plan’s research objectives intended to address decision making under uncertainty are not necessarily those of optimum use to decision makers. Further, the plan does not adequately articulate the utility of better characterizing uncertainty.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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The draft plan also does not build upon existing knowledge in the areas of risk estimation, assessment, perception, communication, and management.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should identify what sources and magnitudes of reductions in key climate change uncertainties are especially needed and where an improved characterization of uncertainty would benefit decision-making, and should use this information to guide the research program.

The draft strategic plan does not adequately use many prior assessments and consensus reports that have provided scientific information to decision makers. While the plan does refer to some of these reports with regard to scientific issues relating to the physical climate, it fails to build upon past experience in applied climate studies, including regional impacts, or in interactions with a wide range of user communities. In these facets the plan must build on lessons learned from the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Impacts of Climate Variability and Change, the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Meteorological Organization/United Nations Environment Programme ozone assessments, and other environmental assessments.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should build upon the lessons learned in applied climate studies and stakeholder interaction from prior environmental and climate assessment activities.

SET THE STAGE FOR IMPLEMENTATION

The draft strategic plan calls for a multitude of research and decision support advances, including a greatly strengthened climate modeling infrastructure to address local, regional, national, and international needs; increased collaboration on key scientific challenges; a significantly upgraded global climate observing system that includes climate-quality data management; and a suite of sophisticated informational products for decision makers who in many cases are new to climate change science. It is not apparent that the CCSP has carefully evaluated the size, scope, and training of the appropriate researcher and stakeholder communities that will be needed to address these issues or how best to take advantage of those resources that do exist. The committee believes that the CCSP faces major challenges in “capacity building”: systematically developing institutional infrastructure; growing new multidisciplinary intellectual talent; nurturing “networking” of diverse perspectives and capabilities; and fostering successful transition from research to decision support applications.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should explicitly address the major requirements in building capacity in human resources that are implied in the plan.

Another type of capacity building is necessary to acquire the computing, communication, and information management resources necessary both to conduct the extensive climate modeling called for in the draft strategic plan and to process and store the large amounts of data collected from a greatly expanded observation network. Applied climate modeling and especially the crucial regional-to-global scale climate change scenarios will require substantially enhanced supercomputer power. Improvements realized in research models need to be tested before transition to operational models; this testing requires substantial computing resources. The draft plan says nothing about what these computing requirements might be or how the CCSP might obtain them.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should provide details about how the CCSP will acquire the computing resources necessary to achieve its goals.

Because the draft strategic plan does not include details about present and projected levels of support for each program element and because the fiscal year 2004 budget request was not available to the committee during its deliberations, the committee had limited information to evaluate whether the “results and deliverables are realistic given available resources,” one of its task statements. However, it is clear that the scope of activities described in the draft strategic plan is greatly enlarged over what has been supported in the past through the GCRP. Implementing this expanded suite of activities will require significant investments in infrastructure and human resources and therefore will necessitate either greatly increased funding for the CCSP or a major reprioritization and cutback in existing programs.

Shortly after this report entered National Academies review, the President’s fiscal year 2004 budget request was made publicly available. It includes $182 million for the CCRI (compared to the fiscal year 2003 budget request of $40 million) within a total CCSP budget request of $1749 million (compared to the fiscal year 2003 budget request of $1747 million). The committee has not had the opportunity to analyze the fiscal year 2004 budget request in detail. Even so, a cursory review of the proposed budget indicates that the CCSP has chosen to increase funding for CCRI at the expense of existing GCRP program elements (or simply relabeled some activities previously considered part of the GCRP as CCRI activities) and has shifted funds from one agency to another. Even if program funding increases, CCSP management will continue to be faced with many funding decisions, such as which new programs should be initiated (and when), whether any existing programs should be scaled back or discontinued, how to balance short-term and longer-term commitments, and how to balance support

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

for international and U.S. programs. These resource allocation decisions must be based on the goals and priorities of the program, which should be clearly described in the revised strategic plan. The independent advisory body recommended by the committee also should be used to inform such decisions. The committee believes it is essential for the CCSP to move forward with the important new elements of CCRI while preserving crucial parts of existing GCRP programs.

Recommendation: The CCSP should use the clear goals and program priorities of the revised strategic plan and advice from the independent advisory body recommended by the committee to guide future funding decisions.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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1
Introduction

The issues addressed by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) are among the most crucial of those facing humankind in the twenty-first century. Given increasing evidence of how humans have modified the Earth’s climate over the last century, it is imperative for the nation to continue directing resources toward better understanding of what form future changes in climate and climate variability may take, the potential positive and negative impacts of these changes on humans and ecosystems, and how society can best mitigate or adapt to these changes.

Over the twentieth century the global mean surface temperature increased by 0.6±0.2°C (1.1±0.4°F) (IPCC, 2001c). Indeed, the 1990s was very likely the warmest decade for the planet since the mid-1800s. An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of other climate changes including the widespread retreat of non-polar glaciers and the rise of global mean sea level by 10 to 20 cm during the twentieth century. The hydrology and ecosystems in many regions of the world also have been affected by changes in the climate. For example, the growing season in the Northern Hemisphere has lengthened, particularly at high latitudes, and plant and animal ranges have shifted poleward and toward higher elevations.

The role that human activities have played in causing these climate changes has been a subject of debate and research for more than a decade. There is no doubt that humans have modified the abundances of key greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, in particular carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and tropospheric ozone (IPCC, 2001c). These gases are at their highest recorded levels. In fact, the ice-core records of carbon dioxide and methane show their twentieth century atmospheric abundances to be significantly larger than at any period over the past 400,000 years. The increase in these greenhouse gases is primarily due to fossil fuel combustion, agriculture, and land-use changes. Recent research advances have led to widespread acceptance that the human-induced increase in greenhouse gas abundances is responsible for a significant portion of the observed climate changes, though it is difficult to quantify against the backdrop of natural variability and climate forcing uncertainties.

Because the Earth system responds so slowly to changes in greenhouse gas levels, and because altering established energy-use practices is difficult, changes and impacts attributable to these factors will continue during the twenty-first century and beyond. Current models indicate a large potential range for future climates, with global mean surface temperature warming by 1.4 to 5.8°C (2.5 to 10.4 °F) by 2100 (IPCC, 2001c). This range, which many consider to be too wide to guide policy making, is due to gaps in understanding of climate science and the socio-economic drivers of climate change. Research under the CCSP is critical to improve this basic understanding so as to make it possible to produce more reliable projections (or “forecasts”) of future climate and associated global changes. Such tested and trusted “forecasts” of future climate would be of great use to a broad spectrum of stakeholders, ranging from national policy makers deciding whether to ratify international agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to regional water managers deciding how much river flow to allocate to irrigation, to individuals choosing which car or appliance to purchase.

Given the above, setting new strategic directions for the CCSP is particularly important. This new program must complement the research of the last decade, which focused on building an understanding of the Earth system, with research to explicitly support decision making. To do so, it will be necessary to continue research into the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of climate and associated global changes, and to add research that will enable decision makers to understand the potential impacts ahead and make choices among possible response strategies. Further, new collaborations among scientists, policy makers, and other stakeholders will be essential to developing a research agenda that is responsive to the nation’s needs.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE U.S. CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE PROGRAM

A multidisciplinary approach to researching Earth’s biogeochemical system was first considered in the mid-1970s, when scientists became aware that humans might be perturbing the climate, as well as the biology, physics, and chemistry of the global environment. A number of reports

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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published during the 1980s (e.g., by the U.S. Department of Energy [DOE, 1977, 1980], the National Research Council [e.g., NRC, 1983, 1986], the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] Earth System Sciences Committee [ESSC 1986, 1988]), suggested that a coordinated national research effort was needed to effectively observe and study the Earth system. The first efforts at a coordinated government research strategy came in late 1986, when NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) began developing parallel global change programs. In 1987 eight agencies formed the federal interagency Committee on Earth Sciences (now known as the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources [CENR]). When the U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP) was created by a presidential initiative in 1989, CENR formed a Subcommittee on Global Change Research (SGCR)6 to provide leadership and coordinate the activities of this new program.

The U.S. Global Climate Research Act of 1990 codified the existing interagency relationships. According to the act the GCRP was to be “aimed at understanding and responding to global change, including the cumulative effects of human activities and natural processes on the environment, to promote discussions toward international protocols in global change research, and for other purposes” (see Appendix D). The act specifically called for a 10-year research plan to be submitted to Congress at least every three years specifying “the goals and priorities for Federal global change research which most effectively advance scientific understanding of global change and provide usable information on which to base policy decisions relating to global change.” Other requirements of the 10-year research plan include descriptions of activities necessary to meet the plan’s goals, identification of existing federal programs that contribute to the GCRP, description of the role of each federal agency and department in implementing the plan, recommendations for international coordination of research activities, and estimates, to the extent practical, of federal funding for the activities in the plan.

In addition to the responsibility for planning and coordinating national global change research, the Global Change Research Act mandated that the GCRP produce periodic scientific assessments of the research results, prepare an annual report to Congress summarizing the program’s activities, and coordinate with other nations. In 2001 the GCRP published its first assessment of results from the research program and implications for the United States (NAST, 2001). The Act also states that the GCRP should retain the NRC to “evaluate the scientific content of the plan” and to provide information and advice, in particular about “priorities for future global change research” (see Appendix D). The NRC has provided ongoing advice to the GCRP through many reports and has convened numerous public meetings of the several NRC boards and committees that focus on global change.

Since its creation in 1990, the GCRP has made substantial investments in the following general areas of climate change and global change research: measurements of the physical, chemical, and biological processes responsible for changes in the Earth system; documentation of global change; studies of past changes in the Earth system; prediction and simulation of global environmental processes; and research initiatives to understand the nature of and interactions among global change processes. The GCRP reports numerous scientific insights and accomplishments of the program in the annual publication of its report to Congress titled Our Changing Planet (e.g., GCRP, 2002, 2003). The program did not release publicly any ten-year plans for global change research before the draft plan this committee is reviewing. The annual publication of Our Changing Planet provides some indication of the GCRP’s future plans and vision. For the most part, however, the GCRP has comprised atmospheric, oceanic, and land-surface research activities conducted by the individual agencies, which coordinate with each other in differing degrees.

During the late 1990s the GCRP began to develop a comprehensive ten-year research plan. It held three planning meetings with agency representatives and the science community between 1998 and 2001. The NRC was asked to provide guidance in the form of a report describing the scientific issues of global change, the key scientific questions that should be addressed by the GCRP, and research approaches to address these questions. In response to this request the NRC Committee on Global Change Research (CGCR) produced Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade (NRC, 1999b). The CGCR also discussed a draft GCRP draft ten-year plan at a public meeting on January 23, 2001. In 2001 the new presidential administration reviewed U.S. climate change policy. Its review included another request to the National Academies to help identify “the areas in the science of climate change where there are the greatest certainties and uncertainties” and to provide “views on whether there are any substantive differences between the IPCC reports and the IPCC summaries.” In response the NRC published Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (NRC, 2001a). Days after receiving the report President George W. Bush announced the

6  

The membership of the Subcommittee on Global Change Research has since grown to 13 agencies and departments: NASA, NOAA, NSF, Environmental Protection Agency, DOE, Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of the Interior/U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of Transportation, Health and Human Services, U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Smithsonian Institution. The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the OMB provide oversight on behalf of the Executive Office of the President.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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FIGURE 1-1 Climate Science and Technology Management Structure. Source: CCSP. Available online at <http://www.climatescience.gov>.

creation of the new Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI). In his announcement the President directed that priorities be established for climate change research, including a focus on identifying the scientific information that can be developed within two to five years to assist the nation in the development of strategies to address global change risks. The President also called for improved coordination among federal agencies to assure that research results are made available to all stakeholders, from national policy leaders to local resource managers.

In February 2002 President Bush announced the formation of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), a new management structure that would incorporate the work of the GCRP and the newly launched CCRI. The CCSP is intended to be a single interagency committee responsible for the entire range of science projects sponsored by the two programs.7 The Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere was named director of the CCSP. The interagency CCSP retains the responsibility for compliance with the requirements of the Global Change Research Act of 1990, including its provisions for annual reporting of findings and short-term plans, scientific reviews by the National Academies, and periodic publication of a 10-year strategic plan for the program. At the same time a Climate Change Technology Program (CCTP) was created to coordinate and develop interagency research efforts focused on developing new technologies related to climate change and its mitigation. The Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy was named the director of the CCTP. As illustrated in Figure 1-1, oversight for both the CCSP and the CCTP is provided by the Interagency Working Group on Climate Change Science and Technology, which in turn reports to a high-level Committee on Climate Change Science and Technology Integration.

The initial activities of the CCSP included an inventory of global change research activities at the 13 participating agencies. The fiscal year 2002 budget included $1670 million officially part of the GCRP plus an additional $1210 million in related and supporting research activities at the agencies. The fiscal year 2003 request for the CCSP was $1747 million and that for the newly established CCRI was $40 million. The fiscal year 2004 requests for CCSP and CCRI are $1749 million and $182 million, respectively.

Soon after the inventory was completed the CCSP began drafting a 10-year strategic plan for global change research. The discussion draft of the plan, Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP, 2002), was released on the CCSP website (<http://www.climatescience.gov>) on November 11, 2002. According to the draft plan’s foreword, the plan was “prepared by the thirteen federal agencies participating in the CCSP, with input from a large number of scientific

7  

The SGCR retains responsibility for overseeing the GCRP in name, however the membership and leadership of the SGCR and the CCSP are identical.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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steering groups and coordination by the CCSP staff under the leadership of Dr. Richard H. Moss,” Executive Director of the GCRP.

This plan was the subject of extensive discussion by over 1,000 scientists, agency representatives, and other stakeholders at a major planning workshop in Washington, D.C., on December 3-5, 2002. The CCSP also requested that the National Academies undertake a fast-track review of the discussion draft of the strategic plan (see Appendix B for statement of task). This report represents the results of the committee’s review of the November 11, 2002, draft strategic plan. This committee will issue a second report reviewing the final strategic plan and the CCSP’s planning process.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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2
Clarifying Vision and Goals

Are the goals clear and appropriate?

Whether the draft plan’s goals are clear and appropriate is really a question of whether it succeeds as a strategic plan. Unfortunately, it does not. The document is not a coherent strategic plan, because it lacks most elements of a strategic plan, including:

  • Clear and ambitious guiding vision of the desired outcome;

  • Unambiguous and executable goals that address the vision and broadly describe what the program is designed to accomplish;

  • Clear timetable for accomplishing the goals and criteria for measuring progress;

  • Assessment of whether existing programs are capable of meeting these goals, thereby identifying required program changes and unmet needs that must be addressed in subsequent implementation planning;

  • Set of explicit prioritization criteria to facilitate program design and resource allocation; and

  • Management plan that provides mechanisms for ensuring that the goals are met and for coordinating, integrating, and balancing individual program elements and participating agencies.

A coherent strategic plan containing these elements is especially critical when, as in the CCSP, the institutional environment is diverse and fragmented and when the program involves new directions and collaborations. Such a plan would provide a common basis for planning, implementation, and evaluation and would protect against a continuation of the status quo. Unfortunately, these elements are either weakly identified, poorly developed, or missing altogether in the draft plan.

The information provided to the committee suggests that the draft plan was produced through a “bottom up” process in which individual committees designed plans for components of the program. While input from several scientific advisory committees guided some of these efforts, they also appear to have been influenced by existing programmatic responsibilities and funding priorities. The committee certainly recognizes that the involvement of federal program managers in the development of the draft plan will greatly facilitate the future implementation of the final plan. However, the result is that the overall CCSP plan does not articulate a clear and consistent guiding framework to enable policy makers and the public, as well as scientists, to understand what this research program is intended to accomplish and how it will contribute to meeting the nation’s needs.

The committee recognizes the difficulty of producing an organization’s first strategic plan and applauds the CCSP for taking on the challenge of drafting a plan that encompasses such diverse players and disciplines, particularly given the history of limited integration within the GCRP (NRC, 2001d). As the first step in a maturing strategic planning process, the draft plan successfully lays out parts of the guiding framework that should shape the final document, but they are scattered throughout the document.

ELEMENTS OF A STRATEGIC PLAN
Vision

The vision for a large government research program like the CCSP should address such national aims as understanding how humans affect global change; implementing efforts to minimize the most harmful effects; reducing vulnerability to global change; and protecting public health and natural resources. Indeed, the GCRP’s authorizing legislation identifies as its purpose “to assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change” (see Appendix D).

In the view of the committee, perhaps the clearest vision for the CCSP was given by President Bush in announcing his Clear Skies and Global Climate Change Initiatives on February 14, 2002.

America and the world share this common goal: we must foster economic growth in ways that protect our environment. We must encourage growth that will provide a better life for citizens,

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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while protecting the land, the water, and the air that sustain life. We must also act in a serious and responsible way, given the scientific uncertainties. While these uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the human factors that contribute to climate change. (Bush, 2002)

A guiding vision similar to this but specific to the CCSP should be succinctly stated in the final strategic plan.

In crafting its vision, the CCSP will need to explicitly consider the scope of the program; that is, does the program focus exclusively on issues of “climate change”—as one might infer from the name of the Climate Change Science Program itself and its constituent, the Climate Change Research Initiative—or does it encompass all, or some, other global changes—as one might infer from the name of the CCSP’s other constituent, the U.S. Global Change Research Program? The answer to this question has implications on the research areas that belong in the program and, accordingly, the level of resources needed. The committee believes that it will be important for the CCSP to consider those processes (1) that interact with climate change to produce significant impacts of societal relevance and therefore must be integrated into research to understand impacts and to develop adaptation and mitigation approaches, and (2) that have large feedbacks to climate change. In this report the committee uses “climate and associated global changes” as a general term encompassing those global changes included in the two categories above.

The CCSP will need to consider whether these or other criteria will determine the program’s coverage of various global change processes. This is important from a planning perspective because the number of factors identified for the CCSP’s attention is likely to grow as the program’s work with decision makers expands. Many decision makers deal with climate change as only one of a suite of factors affecting the people, economy, and ecosystems of an area. Not all of these factors will necessarily be appropriate for the CCSP’s attention. An obvious tradeoff will be between depth and breadth, and the risk is a program spread so thin that it fails to make meaningful progress in core research areas. The CCSP’s decisions about scope will have important implications for the portfolio of research to be funded initially, and for how this portfolio evolves over the program’s lifetime.

Goals

Numerous potential goals for the CCSP, CCRI, and GCRP can be inferred from the draft plan (see Box 2-1). Many come from related legislation or recent presidential announcements. The text does not highlight most as overarching program goals, however. Whereas several might be quite appropriate for CCSP, in light of the absence of an overarching vision, it is unclear whether they are necessary or adequate goals for the program.

Whatever goals that CCSP selects for the final plan, they should be associated with clear time targets, as well as criteria for success and for selecting programs to meet the goals. Clear links should exist between these goals and specific deliverables identified in the plan.

Prioritization Criteria

The draft plan lists many proposed activities, yet it does not identify which of these activities have higher priorities than others, either across the CCSP as a whole or within individual program areas of the CCRI or GCRP, nor does it describe a process for establishing priorities.8 The mismatch between these multiple proposed activities and the resources currently devoted to the program implies that not all of the projects will be pursued with the same intensity. Numerous participants in the CCSP public workshop held in December 2002 were concerned that without priority setting, resources would not be directed toward important new research areas.

The committee inferred possible CCSP priorities from the draft plan, such as those activities included in the CCRI, or that have deliverables in two to four years. Thus, the document’s criteria for including activities in the CCRI implies prioritization, specifically whether the activity will (1) produce significant decision or policy-relevant deliverables within the next two to four years and (2) contribute substantially to one or more of the CCRI goals of reducing uncertainty, improving global observation capabilities, and developing resources to support policy-and decision making. Also, although no prioritization rationale is clearly stated, some process presumably took place in choosing which products and payoffs to include for each program element in the GCRP portion of the plan.

The committee believes that the revised strategic plan would be greatly improved if it provided specific prioritization criteria or outlined an overarching prioritization process for the CCSP. Key considerations might include the relative importance of an activity for meeting the program’s goals, cost, positioning and leverage relative to the private sector and other U.S. and international research entities, and sequencing and scheduling considerations. Ideally the CCSP should make its funding decisions by carefully and explicitly considering which activities best meet the program’s vision and goals and when particular research products are required. These future decisions need to be informed by the CCSP’s

8  

The draft plan states that activities would be identified for “early action and support” using “agreed-upon criteria” in the following areas: relevance/contribution, scientific merit, readiness, deliverables, linkages, and costs (CCSP, 2002 p. 165).

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

BOX 2-1 Candidates for CCSP’s Overarching Goals that Can Be Inferred from the Draft Strategic Plan, (CCSP, 2002).

CCSP GOALS:

  • “balance the near-tem (2 to 4-year) focus of the CCRI with the breadth of the GCRP, pursuing accelerated development of answers to the scientific aspects of key climate policy issues while continuing to seek advances in the knowledge of the physical, biological, and chemical processes that influence the Earth system” (p. 2).

  • “inform public debate on the wide range of climate and global change issues necessary for effective public policy and stewardship of natural resources” (p. 4).

  • “[establish] and [apply] priorities for climate change research so the Nation can address and evaluate global and climate change risks and opportunities” (p. 149).

CCRI GOALS:

  • “measurably improve the integration of scientific knowledge, including measures of uncertainty, into effective decision support systems and resources” (p.).

  • “reduce significant uncertainties in climate science” (p. 2; p. 8).

  • “[a]ddress key and emerging climate change science areas that offer the prospect of significant improvement in understanding of climate change phenomena, and where accelerated development of decision support information is possible” (p. 15).

  • “improve global climate observing systems” (p. 2; p. 8).

  • “[o]ptimize observations, monitoring, and data management systems of ‘climate quality data’” (p. 15).

  • “develop resources to support policymaking and resource management” (p 2).

  • “develop resources to support policy- and decision-making” (p. 8).

  • “[d]evelop decision support resources including scenarios and comparisons; quantification of the sensitivity and uncertainty of the climate system to natural and anthropogenic (human-caused) forcings through the implementation and application of models; and structured information for national, regional, and local discussions about possible global change causes, impacts, benefits, and mitigation and adaptation strategies” (p. 15).

  • “synthesiz[e] scientific results and produc[e] decision support resources responsive to national and regional needs” (p. 38).

GCRP GOALS:

  • “address key uncertainties about changes in the Earth’s global environmental system, both natural and human-induced” (p. 55).

  • “monitor, understand, and predict global change” (p. 55).

  • “provide a sound scientific basis for national and international decision-making” (p. 55).

overarching vision, rather than only by the considerations of individual agencies as they implement the plan. This will be particularly important, for example, in developing budget support for new programs and for crosscutting

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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issues that are of high strategic importance but currently lack a strong institutional home or span multiple agencies and congressional appropriation committees (e.g., water cycle, decision support).

Assessment of Current Programs and Resources

The CCSP took an important step in mid-2002 when it inventoried federal activities related to global change research (<http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/Inventory_budgetsummary_26Aug02.pdf>). This inventory provides a baseline for the CCSP to assess, as a part of the strategic planning process, whether current programs are sufficient to accomplish the goals, performance metrics, and timelines that will be identified in the final strategic plan. Any gaps or unmet needs for information, capacity, or resources to address the program’s goals and vision that are identified through this process will be a key input to implementing the plan. To be successful and to provide a clear map for the implementation phase that follows, the final strategic plan will need to include a more rigorous assessment that evaluates the match of existing programs and resources to the vision, goals, and priorities identified during the revision process.

Management Plan

A management plan describes the organizational structures and approaches to be used to ensure that program goals are met and to coordinate, integrate, and balance program elements. Chapter 15 of the draft strategic plan constitutes a preliminary management plan for the CCSP and describes at a general level the management structures and processes that will be used to coordinate and integrate federal research and technology development in climate and associated global change. As will be discussed in Chapter 4 of this report, the basic management structure appears sound and could provide a useful general framework for the management of the program. However, the chapter does not provide sufficient detail for the committee to have confidence that the management plan will be effective. A detailed management plan is especially important for the CCSP, because it is new and it is charged with coordinating and integrating the activities of 13 agencies, each with a separate mission and a long history of independent research on climate and associated global changes.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should articulate a clear, concise vision statement for the program in the context of national needs. The vision should be specific, ambitious, and apply to the entire CCSP. The plan should translate this vision into a set of tangible goals, apply an explicit process to establish priorities, and include an effective management plan.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GCRP AND THE CCRI

The draft plan states that to be included in the CCRI, “a program must produce both significant decision or policy-relevant deliverables within two to four years and contribute significantly to one or more of the following activities: (1) address key and emerging climate change science areas that offer the prospect of significant improvement in understanding of climate change phenomena, and where accelerated development of decision support information is possible, (2) optimize observations, monitoring, and data management systems of ‘climate quality data’ […], and (3) developing decision support resources” (CCSP, 2002, p. 15). Focusing part of the CCSP on short-term investigations oriented principally toward decision support is a welcome addition to the longer-term research carried out under the GCRP.

The decision support activities described in Chapter 4 are generally consistent with the CCRI objectives. In fact, the committee considers this emphasis on scientific support for decision makers one of the most promising and innovative features of the draft plan. While there are valuable short-term deliverables in this arena, the committee feels that the CCSP should also commit to a long-term investment in decision support as an on-going component of the program. It is important for the revised plan to make clear how a decision support function in the CCSP will continue well beyond the current two- to four-year effort of the CCRI.

Many of the activities described in Chapters 2 and 3 of the draft plan, however, are not consistent with the CCRI focus on decision support and are unlikely to produce deliverables within four years. This is not to say that these activities are unimportant, but simply that they are not consistent with the CCRI objectives given in the draft plan. Most if not all of the science activities identified to address key and emerging climate change science areas in Chapter 2 seem to better meet an objective of accelerating efforts to understand well-defined, priority scientific questions that may or may not be of direct relevance for decision making. Those activities proposed in Chapter 3 to optimize observations, monitoring, and data management systems appear to be directed at “jump starting” a major new capacity-building initiative in a crosscutting element. These efforts will have few short-term deliverables but significant long-term benefits.

In revising the strategic plan there are a number of ways that the CCSP could address the major inconsistencies between the activities described in Chapters 2 and 3 and the stated goals for the CCRI. One approach would be to revise the objectives of the CCRI to be more consistent with the apparent objectives mentioned above for the activities currently included in Chapters 2 and 3 of the draft plan. This revision would tend to de-emphasize the importance of decision support within the CCRI. An alternative approach

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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would be move those activities in Chapters 2 and 3 of the draft plan that are not directly linked to near-term decision making to the relevant GCRP sections of the plan. Decision support activities would then likely become the primary focus of the CCRI. The committee believes that it is important for the program to correct these inconsistencies while maintaining a strong emphasis on near-term decision support in the CCRI.

In addition to addressing these inconsistencies, the revised strategic plan also needs to more clearly describe how the research activities included in the GCRP support the decision support needs of the CCRI. The revised plan should clearly describe how the program intends to enable the transition of research results into operations and decision making. Indeed, there should be a “rolling linkage” between the two programs, with CCRI objectives periodically redefined as a result of new scientific input from GCRP.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should: (1) present clear goals for the CCRI and ensure that its activities are consistent with these goals; (2) maintain CCRI’s strong emphasis on support for near-term decisions as an ongoing component of the program; and (3) include an explicit mechanism to link GCRP and CCRI activities.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

3
Meeting the Nation’s Needs for Climate and Global Change Information

Is the plan responsive to the nation’s needs for information on climate change and global change, their potential implications, and comparisons of the potential effects of different response options?

The nation has diverse information needs on climate and associated global changes, their implications, and different response options. These needs arise from decision makers across the public and private sectors dealing with issues ranging from energy to public health and the environment and operating at the local, state, national, and international levels. A major weakness of the draft strategic plan is that it does not adequately identify these diverse needs or use them to target the scientific studies that it proposes. In general the description of the Climate Change Research Initiative (CCRI) in the draft plan does a better job of addressing a relatively short list of the major policy decisions that are pending at a national level. Even at this level the plan specifies that one of the objectives of the CCRI will be to identify “national-level decisions and [use] that list to develop decision support activities as well as to help prioritize climate change research” (CCSP, 2002, p. 40).

The draft strategic plan does identify at a general level four areas that will be important to meeting the needs of decision makers.9

  • Improve the global climate observation system. Both the CCRI (“optimize observations, monitoring, and data management systems of ‘climate quality data,’” CCSP, 2002, p. 15) and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP) (“monitor, understand, and predict global change,” CCSP, 2002, p. 55) call for improved global observing and information systems.

  • Improve understanding of climate and associated global changes. The draft plan states that “science-based information is required to inform public debate on the wide range of climate and global change issues necessary for effective public policy and stewardship of natural resources” (CCSP, 2002, p. 4). The committee considers the wide range of climate change and associated global change issues to encompass Earth system processes (physical, biological, chemical, and societal), impacts on human societies and ecological systems, and the scientific underpinnings of potential response options.

  • Reduce key uncertainties. The CCRI seeks to “reduce significant uncertainties in climate science” (CCSP, 2002, p. 2; p. 8). Likewise, the GCRP seeks to address “key uncertainties about changes in the Earth’s global environmental system, both natural and human-induced” (CCSP, 2002, p. 55).

  • Develop decision support resources. Creating “resources to support policymaking and resource management” (CCSP, 2002, p. 2) is a major new undertaking included in the CCRI portion of the plan. This objective appears to be multifaceted, calling for developing “scenarios and comparisons; quantification of the sensitivity and uncertainty of the climate system to natural and anthropogenic forcings through the implementation and application of models; and structured information for national, regional, and local discussion about possible global change causes, impacts, benefits, and mitigation and adaptation strategies” (CCSP, 2002, p. 15).

In addition to these information needs the committee notes a related need that can be inferred from the plan, though it is not explicitly stated.

  • Build capacity to implement the strategic plan. The ambitious objectives of the draft strategic plan require substantial investments in training new researchers, building linkages across disciplines and between researchers and stakeholders, and in computing and data storage capabilities.

This chapter assesses the extent to which the draft plan addresses these areas without commenting on whether this

9  

As discussed in Chapter 2, although these general themes are expressed repeatedly throughout the draft plan, they are not explicitly identified as overarching program goals, and therefore are not identified as such in this report.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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list comprises the full set of information needs that the final CCSP plan should address. Developing that fuller list should be part of the process by which the draft plan is revised.

THE GLOBAL CLIMATE OBSERVATION SYSTEM

The draft plan correctly identifies the need for a global observing system for climate and climate-related variables. Such a system would include observations of physical, chemical, and biological parameters of the ocean, atmosphere, and land systems, and it would incorporate relevant socio-economic data needed to understand the factors that influence the causes of climate change. Its goals would be to supply the scientific basis for detecting climate and associated global changes and for testing and calibrating the climate system models, and to develop data products of use to decision makers. To provide climate-quality data, the observation strategy would need to be long-term, subject to careful calibration and validation, and be flexible enough to accommodate new understanding and evolving needs (NRC, 1999a; 2000b). The draft strategic plan could be improved by providing a structured program for establishing such a global climate observing system and a strategy for coordinating observation needs that cross disciplinary and national boundaries. The existing climate observing system is a patchwork of observation networks, which are not well coordinated. Large investments are needed in maintaining and expanding an integrated observing system that will support monitoring, diagnosis, and modeling of climate and associated global changes.

Many research needs in observations, monitoring, and data management systems are identified in Chapter 3, Chapters 5-11, and Chapter 12 of the draft plan. The observation goals are generally appropriate and reasonably complete, although they would benefit from some coarse prioritization or implementation schedule. A major weakness in the plan, however, is that it does not describe how existing observation systems will be integrated, nor does it offer a pathway to expansion of observation systems to include key climate-related ecological, biogeochemical, geophysical, and socio-economic measurements. A great need exists for systematic integrated measurements, where interagency and international cooperation could bring major advances. For example, significant changes in natural and managed ecosystems are already occurring in response to climate variability and changes, yet a clear strategy for obtaining the necessary observations is lacking. A more integrated approach to ecosystem observations would include ground-based monitoring of biogeochemical and other ecosystem processes (e.g., carbon dioxide flux at distributed reference sites and nutrients in stream, river, estuarine, and coastal systems and large-scale patterns of disturbance and fire) and monitoring of the distribution and abundance of key species in a range of regional terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The global climate observing system would provide datasets to explore the coupling of major cycles (e.g., carbon, water, nitrogen, energy). Better integrating relevant socio-economic observations—including changes in land use, location and intensity of economic activities that alter atmospheric chemistry, and social conditions that alter vulnerability to climate change—into this observation system could be of great use in understanding the importance of various drivers of climate change.

Major issues associated with creating and implementing an integrated, global climate observing system need more attention in the draft plan to make it clear how the selection of observation systems and sites would be guided by an overarching observation strategy. It is important that the revised strategic plan address the following:

  • The role that the CCSP will play in implementing and maintaining national- to global-scale observing systems that require interagency and international cooperation.

  • How the program will develop an appropriate range of space-based and in situ observing systems with an adequate overlap to allow the calibration necessary to maintain data quality.

  • Efforts to observe important local and regional variability (such as due to local orography, local coastline structure, or land-sea temperature differences not otherwise resolved) that are necessary to meet the CCSP’s goals of providing information to decision makers. Design of local or regional observation arrays will need to be responsive a variety of users’ needs while being consistent in accuracy and practice so that they feed data into the global array.

  • How climate modeling and observation activities will be coordinated, including the use of models to aid in the design of improved climate observing systems and the deployment of observation networks appropriate for testing climate models.

  • The challenges associated with the transition of research observations to operational platforms and to measurements involving in situ and space-based instruments (NRC, 2000a). Although the plan refers to making climate observations accessible, it would be more effective if it conveyed an overall vision for climate services as discussed in various recent reports (e.g., NRC, 2001b).

  • The requirements to ensure that observations for weather have value for climate studies (NRC, 1999a; 2000b; 2000c).

Chapter 3 of the plan identifies a number of observation activities that CCSP considers of higher priority for decision making, therefore warranting their inclusion in the CCRI portion of the plan. Although the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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activities chosen are appropriate, the observation approach within the CCRI lacks a clear strategy for implementing the system. Chapter 3 of the plan largely sidesteps the fundamental overhaul and large national and international capacity-building required to establish the needed observation programs. It is clear that the observing system objectives listed in Chapter 3 of the plan are long-term programs with most benefits accruing well beyond two to four years. This does not necessarily mean that new initiatives to improve observations, monitoring, and data management are inappropriate for the CCRI. Rather, if they are to remain as part of the CCRI, the plan should more clearly describe what will be accomplished in two to four years, how these results will improve decision making, and how these short-term initiatives relate to longer-term progress on observations, monitoring, and data management that will be carried out under the GCRP.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should better describe a strategic program for achieving an integrated observing system for detecting and understanding climate variability and change and associated global changes on scales from regional to global.

IMPROVE UNDERSTANDING OF CLIMATE AND ASSOCIATED GLOBAL CHANGES

The scientific research program presented by the draft plan is of mixed quality. In general, the better developed parts of the plan build upon the substantial and largely successful research programs of the last decade. Also, those elements of the research plan that were based on the advice and reports of specialized scientific steering groups (e.g., the carbon cycle, the water cycle, climate observations, and climate modeling) benefited from a sustained and close interaction with their scientific community and the relevant federal program managers. In contrast, several of the crosscutting program elements—such as regional studies, ecosystems, the human dimensions, and the role of oceans in climate—need the greatest improvement. This is largely because these content areas are not as well developed, too narrowly constrained in the existing GCRP structure, or fall across multiple program elements.

Thus, the committee finds that, although existing GCRP activities provide a reasonably sound foundation for the CCSP strategic plan in areas of historical strength, this approach also has important shortcomings. It potentially perpetuates: the weak coordination that has existed among program elements; the adherence to agency-specific foci that, in the past, has hindered the development of comprehensive research programs in some areas; and the difficulty in supporting new crosscutting initiatives. The enhanced focus of the CCSP on decision support is likely to bring these shortcomings into sharp relief, as decision makers who need to understand impacts and develop response strategies call for new kinds of information that have historically received relatively little attention from the GCRP.

In the following pages the committee discusses several weaknesses in the research activities presented by the plan. A more detailed analysis of each chapter of the draft plan is provided in Part II of this report.

Regional Studies to Facilitate Decision Making

A need now exists to use understanding of global-scale phenomena to develop predictive information on regional and smaller scales. Such information is essential for federal, regional, and local decision makers and resource managers addressing such issues as public health and economic development, water use planning, the condition of forests and fisheries, and endangered species. The CCSP highlights the need to investigate regional problems, devoting a section in Chapter 4 of the draft plan to “Decision Support Resources for Regional Resource Management” (CCSP, 2002, p. 41-43) and identifying some regional modeling products and payoffs designed to improve interactions between producers and users of climate variability and change information (CCSP, 2002, p. 77-78). Insufficient detail, however, is provided in the draft plan about how the program anticipates scaling down its current efforts to address regional issues.

Scaling down from global to regional and local scales is an important research endeavor that the CCSP must address. Particularly important and challenging will be analyses and models of future regional climate and related effects on social, economic, and ecological issues of concern to regional decision makers. The committee believes that regional or place-based studies provide important opportunities to calibrate models with specific in situ measurements, evaluate global mechanisms, address the tangible impacts of climate change on societies and ecosystems, and develop models for providing climate information to stakeholders and thus better engage them in the decision-making process. Regional studies are also a critical element of the global climate observing system, providing key information for improving climate system models. Pursuing regional studies can also provide scientific understanding of scale interactions that translate local climate and associated global changes to global impacts.

Most routine resource management decisions are made on a daily, seasonal, interannual time scale (e.g., agricultural planting and risk management, water management, energy resources for heating and cooling, etc.), yet these time scales are under-represented in the CCSP. To maximize the utility of decision support activities, the nature and time frame of the relevant decisions need to be clearly identified, and appropriate tools need to be developed. This concept has been well

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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articulated in the western water “decision calendar” developed by NOAA’s Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) in Boulder, Colorado. The calendar depicts the annual reservoir management decision timeframes so that climate information can be provided to managers when it is most useful to them. The preliminary success of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forecasts, as discussed in the draft plan (CCSP, 2002, p. 6), and the achievements of pilot regional assessments in delivering useful climate information to stakeholders demonstrate the societal and economic benefits that can accrue from such efforts. The successful prediction of long-term climate change at regional scales, however, is a significant challenge facing the CCSP.

On an international level the development of regional specific studies and networks of scientists is an opportunity to leverage the U.S. program with international contributions while building a broader community of scientists outside the United States. Regional and local networks of on-the-ground science efforts will enhance the reliability of the outputs from the program and provide key links with global satellite observations.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should more fully describe how models and knowledge that support regional decision making and place-based science will be developed.

Human, Economic, and Ecological Dimensions of Climate Change

While the last decade of climate change research focused on how the climate is changing, the next decade must also support an increase in understanding of the potential impacts of climate change on human societies and ecosystems and related options for adaptation and mitigation. The need for research in these areas logically follows from the CCSP’s new emphasis on decision support, and is identified in the draft strategic plan.10 Strong and strategic research programs on human dimensions and ecosystems and better integration of economic concepts would enable CCSP to meet this need. However, the committee finds that the draft plan’s coverage of these topics (primarily in Chapters 10 and 11) is sufficiently weak that it raises serious questions about CCSP’s ability to meet current and future needs of decision-makers at local, state, regional, and national levels or to provide adequate input into the models and analyses needed to reduce or clarify uncertainties. These flaws create critical weaknesses that translate across the draft strategic plan, because so many connections should exist between the plan’s other research areas and research on human dimension and ecosystems, and because economic analysis is so integral to decision-making.

The plan’s treatment of human dimensions has several important gaps. It does not include, for example, research on the role of institutions (e.g., property rights and markets) or of consumption (e.g., per capita water consumption) in driving future patterns of environmental change and resource supply and demand. Nor does it recognize the importance of deliberative interactions with stakeholders and the value of research on human preferences as input into policy decisions. Importantly, Chapter 11 fails to address the need for basic social science research into human-environment interactions or for more applied research into questions about mitigation and adaptation.

A key gap in the draft plan is research that might lead to better understanding of the costs and benefits of climate change. Measuring and monetizing the costs and benefits of climate change is a fundamental intellectual problem. A wide range of potential costs and benefits needs to be considered, including the direct and indirect costs and benefits of mitigation, the costs and benefits of public and private adaptation, and the costs and benefits of adjustment from one climate to another. Generating estimates of the impacts from climate change, which involves both market and nonmarket effects, is a continuing research challenge. Improving the economic research in the draft plan could be of great value to policymakers whose choices will hinge on the broadly construed costs and benefits of alternative actions.

The research plan for ecosystems needs a more cohesive and strategic organizing framework that places a clear priority on predicting ecosystem impacts and on providing the scientific foundation for possible actions and policies to minimize deleterious effects and optimize future outcomes. Overall, the draft plan devotes insufficient attention to understanding the interplay between climate change and the ecological patterns and processes that sustain the capacity of ecosystems to deliver goods and services desired by society (e.g., the diversity, distribution, and dynamics of species and ecological communities; large scale ecosystem processes like disturbance and hydrology; the spatial configuration and connections among ecosystems; and evolutionary processes) (NRC, 1999d). Targeted research in these areas will be essential for ensuring that managed and natural ecosystems continue to provide food, clean water, wildlife, germplasm resources, and other benefits. Insights from this research will be of use, for example, to farmers and public land agencies for designing and choosing among competing management approaches, to county agencies for developing land-use plans, and to policy makers for evaluating the full benefits and risks of adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Recommendation: The revised plan should strengthen its approach to the human, economic, and ecological

10  

For example, “How readily can adaptation take place in different natural and socio-economic systems?” (CCSP, 2002, p. 8), and “What are the projected costs and effects of different potential response strategies to manage the risks of long-term climate change?” (CCSP, 2002, p. 5).

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

dimensions of climate and associated global changes to ensure it supports the research necessary to project and monitor societal and ecosystem impacts, to design adaptation and mitigation strategies, and to understand the costs and benefits of climate change and related response options.

Integration of Critical Crosscutting Issues and Associated Global Changes

While the draft strategic plan does a better job of identifying links between chapters and crosscutting themes than did previous draft GCRP plans, overall, the coordination among many program components is poor. Chapter 8 of the draft plan on land use and land cover is a notable exception by presenting a problem-driven approach that integrates natural science and social science research on environmental change. This chapter frames its research strategy by identifying and analyzing the agents of change in the system in question, improving the ability to characterize and predict environmental changes and improving understanding of the links and feedbacks between the environmental systems. Chapter 6 of the plan provides an overarching discussion of climate variability and change with questions that would motivate efforts that span present elements of the GCRP, but it does not indicate how such crosscutting themes would be addressed.

There are many examples where coordination is lacking in the plan. Ecosystems and human dimensions are weakly integrated across the draft plan. The carbon cycle strategy in Chapter 9 would be greatly strengthened if it included a more comprehensive plan for research on the human dimensions of the carbon cycle and if it addressed the full range of interactions with ecological systems. The plan’s treatment of water resource issues would be strengthened by greater linkages between the water cycle chapter and the addressing decision support, carbon, and land use and land cover. The apparent disconnect among the chapters on atmospheric composition, the water cycle, ecology, and land use and land cover is another manifestation of a problem with plan integration.

Certain crosscutting topics that ought to come up in multiple parts of the plan are surprisingly absent. One already mentioned is the general lack of economic approaches across the plan. Another example is the oceans. The plan provides uneven coverage of ocean-related issues and impacts, despite the well-documented role of the ocean in climate change and variability. The oceans store and transport freshwater, nutrients, heat and carbon, and as such are a critical component of the climate system; they are also an important source of livelihood, recreation, and food and directly impact the majority of the world’s population.

The CCSP needs to address another kind of linkage in addition to those among existing program elements, specifically the interactions and synergies between climate and associated global changes. The committee believes that it will be particularly important for the CCSP to consider those processes (1) that interact with climate change to produce significant impacts of societal relevance and therefore must be integrated into research to understand impacts and to develop adaptation and mitigation approaches, and (2) that have large feedbacks to climate change.

The draft plan makes an important step in this direction through its inclusion of land use and land cover change as a new core program element. The committee believes that the CCSP should consider expanding its coverage of two other interacting processes of global change. First, major shifts are now occurring in global nutrient cycles, which can have important feedbacks with the climate system. Of particular concern is the widespread elevation in environmental nitrogen due to greatly increased use of nitrogen, especially in agriculture. Second, major translocations are now occurring in the world’s biota. Species invasions and alterations in the structure and functioning of many ecosystems, already on the rise due to other factors, are expected to increase in response to a changing climate. In turn, these ecological shifts (such as increases in fire frequency due to invasions of fire prone plants) are likely to alter the set of feasible options for adapting to climate change.

Recommendation: The CCSP should strengthen the treatment and integration of crosscutting research areas in all substantive chapters. The revised strategic plan should address the interactions and synergies of climate change with other associated global changes.

Global and Long-Term Context for Climate Science

The global and long-time scale perspectives of climate researchers have provided a valuable context in observing, understanding, modeling, and responding to climate variability and change (e.g., NRC, 1999b). This context is not clearly conveyed in the draft plan. Further, the plan does not acknowledge how variability and change in North America is strongly affected by the global atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere. It is the global, three-dimensional ocean circulation that introduces long-time scales (decades to centuries) into climate variability and change and it is the basin-scale patterns of coupled ocean and atmosphere variability that introduce interannual and decadal variability in North America. The plan should better reflect the role of large-scale and global variability: the global nature of the ocean and atmosphere circulation and their associated time scales; the large storage capacity and slow sequestration of heat, carbon and other constituents in important reservoirs; and the ability of remote regions to affect climate in North America.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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The draft plan could be improved by establishing the setting of the Earth located in space, receiving solar radiation from the Sun, with large-scale processes in the atmosphere and ocean then governing the distribution of heat and freshwater about the globe. The influence of the large-scale setting on regional variability and change needs to be a recurring theme in all the chapters of the draft plan. To do so would motivate the need for an integrated global climate observing system and explain why climate science research in the United States must include studies of processes and variability at sites remote from North America. This would also help justify to stakeholders who seek improved local prediction why they should support long-term, global climate observations and research.

A better presentation of the time scales associated with climate change would also point to the value of paleoclimate data as a descriptor of past natural variability, including past abrupt climate changes (NRC, 2002). While paleoclimate data is noted at times in the draft plan, its value becomes more clear when one is aware of the large-scale patterns of variability of the climate system. It should be made clear that paleoclimate data provides long records of the time scales and range of variability that have been dominant in the past and an essential context for present studies of forced climate change combined with natural variability.

Recommendation: The global and long-term historical context of climate change and variability should receive greater emphasis in the revised strategic plan.

ADDRESSING KEY UNCERTAINTIES

The draft strategic plan identifies reducing uncertainty as a top priority for the CCSP, and the CCRI in particular (e.g., CCSP, 2002, p. 2). Addressing uncertainty is the subject of one of the three guiding principles for the CCSP.

CCSP analyses should specifically evaluate and report uncertainty. All of science, and all decisionmaking, involves uncertainty. Uncertainty need not be a basis for inaction; however, scientific uncertainty should be carefully described in CCSP reports as an aid to the public and decisionmakers (CCSP, 2002, p. 11).

Chapter 2 of the draft strategic plan titled “Research Focused on Key Climate Change Uncertainties,” describes research areas that address “key and emerging climate change science areas that offer the prospect of significant improvement in understanding of climate change phenomena, and where accelerated development of decision support information is possible” (CCSP, 2002, p. 15; p. 17). These statements indicate that the CCSP realizes three important points about uncertainty: (1) uncertainty is inherent in science and decision making and therefore not necessarily a basis for inaction; (2) decision makers need to be well informed about uncertainty to allow more knowledgeable decisions to be made; and (3) accelerated research on uncertainties should focus on those uncertainties that are important for informing policy and decision making. However, the draft plan does not present a systematic process to identify the key scientific uncertainties and to ascertain which are most important to decision makers. The draft plan would be more useful in sequencing a set of problem-driven research activities if such a process had been applied. Further, the committee believes that the draft plan understates the level of our current understanding and overstates the level of uncertainty in some places, possibly because parts of it so closely resemble preceding GCRP plans. Thus, the resources put into the GCRP over the last decade appear to be undervalued, despite the significant advances in understanding of climate and global change achieved by the program. The connections between what the plan promises to do for the coming years and what has been accomplished over the last decade should be strengthened in the revised plan.

The CCRI goal of reducing significant uncertainties within two to four years may only be achievable incrementally for the topics identified in Chapter 2 of the draft plan (i.e., aerosols, North American carbon cycle, and cloud and polar feedback processes). Such incremental reductions in uncertainty in these areas could be realized within longer-term national and international research efforts. Thus, because addressing key uncertainties for decision makers is a high priority for the CCSP in the next two to four years, the program should set goals for near-term reporting of progress. Additionally, the CCRI could focus on better characterizing uncertainties and on uncertainties that are more amenable to a short-term solution. These include questions that can be addressed using “if, then” scenarios and improvements to climate models that can be accomplished with existing data and collaborations among current researchers.

Characterizing and Reducing Uncertainty

All important decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty. Indeed, uncertainty will never be resolved fully. This points to the importance of providing the most accurate representation of uncertainty and points of scientific disagreement. The CCSP recognizes this point in choosing a guiding principle that “CCSP analyses should specifically evaluate and report uncertainty” (CCSP, 2002, p. 11), but the draft strategic plan neither clearly describes the different types of uncertainties nor articulates the value of characterizing uncertainty to decision makers. For example, inherent uncertainty in the climate system (e.g., the chaotic motions of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans) is not clearly distinguished from uncertainty due to a lack of understanding. Yet, it is important for decision makers to understand the source, magnitude, and nature of uncertainty, as well as areas of insufficient scientific understanding and of scientific disagreement. Is the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×

uncertainty due to a lack of knowledge about causal processes? Are causal processes known, but the parameters cannot be accurately estimated because of lack of data, imprecision in the data, or inadequate computing power? Is uncertainty traced to broken links in the separate but interacting systems that drive climatic dynamics and other global processes? The precise characterization of the bases of uncertainty can target areas of further investigation. It can also help decision makers judge whether additional knowledge might improve decisions in the near future.

Systematic Identification of Key Uncertainties for Decision Making

Chapter 2 of the strategic plan accurately identifies three research questions related to significant remaining uncertainties in the physical, chemical, and biological understanding of the Earth system. The plan does not explain how these questions were selected or how the results of these research activities will lead to improved decision making in two to four years. It is not apparent that the CCSP systematically considered the value of these activities for decision making. Instead, the draft plan states that the research areas are selected from recommendations of the NRC report Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (NRC, 2001a). Because the recommended research areas in this report were intended to answer, “What are the specific areas of science that need to be studied further, in order of priority, to advance our understanding of climate change?”, this list of research areas may be different from one optimized for providing useful information to decision makers. Relying on the recommendations for priority research from the Climate Change Science report is inadequate for meeting the nation’s broader needs for global change information to support a wide range of decisions.

Key uncertainties should be identified more systematically, in consultation with decision makers to learn what decisions they need to make. A research agenda focused on making better decisions can then be generated by carefully considering what information is most critical for making those decisions, and then identifying the information that is most uncertain. In many ways this process is similar to the strategic planning process outlined in Chapter 2 of this report. Rigorous processes of this sort are routinely used in other areas of applied research associated with substantial uncertainty (e.g., the rate of spread of a communicable disease).

As noted above, uncertainty is an unavoidable feature of climate and global environmental policy choices. Many techniques to estimate risk, the probability of an impact in the face of uncertainty, are available. There is a sizable and rapidly growing literature in the field of risk analysis that can inform climate and global change decisions, such as how to respond to the threat of drought, flooding, or crop failures. Risk analysis addresses not only the estimation and assessment of risks but also risk perception, risk communication, and risk management—knowledge useful to a wide variety of decisions. For example, the framing of risks and the means of communicating information about risk are highly influential in how risks are perceived by laypersons and experts (NRC, 1996).

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should identify what sources and magnitudes of reductions in key climate change uncertainties are especially needed and where an improved characterization of uncertainty would benefit decision making, and should use this information to guide the research program.

DECISION SUPPORT RESOURCES

The CCRI portion of the plan introduces an admirable emphasis on the need for science to provide decision support for those in the public and private sectors whose policy decisions are affected by climate change and variability. The CCRI’s call for building decision support resources is one of the most innovative and promising features of the draft plan. Building and using this capacity means commitments to capitalize on available information and existing decision support tools, to collect new information to address gaps in understanding, to develop new tools and capacity for decision making, and to engage stakeholders. The committee views the development of decision support resources as the most critical short-term goal of the CCSP. Strong incentives exist for decision makers to use the results of CCSP research when this information is developed and communicated in an accessible and timely manner. The overall objectives identified in the draft plan are certainly amenable to significant short-term progress.

Although the draft strategic plan has incorporated the general language about decision support in many places, it is vague about what this will actually mean. In some cases the strategic plan does not reflect the current state of knowledge relative to decision support and recent science decision-making experiences. Of particular importance is that the plan needs to better identify decision makers and their individual needs, as discussed in Chapter 5 of this report.

Decision Support Research and Operational Activities

The discussion of decision support in the draft plan is weakly developed, in particular the section “Resources for Risk Analysis and Decision Making under Uncertainty” on pages 52-53 of the draft plan. The draft plan does not adequately distinguish between research to develop new decision support tools or understanding, on the one hand, and operational decision support activities, on the other. It then does not identify state-of-the-art undertakings in both.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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Decision support research includes (1) natural and social science research to address gaps in information needed by decision makers (e.g., scenarios, applied modeling); (2) research on processes to improve decision making by effectively translating scientific information into policy options; and (3) research on developing public participation processes. The operational end of decision support focuses on building specific mechanisms or tools for connecting with the wide range of stakeholders, ranging from deliberative processes to identify user needs to application of decision support tools in an operational mode.

Research on processes to improve decision making should comprise activities to tailor available tools for decision support and risk analysis, the transfer of tools across context, and the development of tools customized for climate and global change decision making. The draft plan identifies a number of existing approaches for evaluating longer-term risks in multivariable systems, including game theory, preferences elicitation, and decision sequencing (CCSP, 2002, p. 53); and scenarios, comparisons, applied climate modeling, and historical data analysis (CCSP, 2002, p. 43-52). On the other hand, as described previously, the plan could call for more efforts in the areas of risk assessment and estimation, risk perception, risk communication, and risk management. In identifying research activities in decision support the plan should emphasize products that can be used at appropriate scales and in the context of all the factors influencing environmentally relevant decisions, as well as the opportunities to produce these products in cooperation with stakeholders and the private sector.

The plan does not adequately elaborate upon the processes it will employ for deliberation and adaptive learning. The effectiveness of decision-making tools and risk analyses is fully dependent upon the procedures adopted for their use, in particular how scientists, decision makers, and other stakeholders are engaged in the process. Deliberation should be devoted to determining user needs for decision-relevant scientific information, to the selection of appropriate tools, to the application of those tools in support of decisions, and to the inclusion of all stakeholders in the process. A clearly articulated program of deliberation processes, called analytic deliberation, is contained in the NRC report Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (1996).

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should better describe how decision support capabilities will be developed and how these efforts will link with and inform the program’s research to improve understanding of climate and associated global changes.

Applied Climate Modeling

The “Applied Climate Modeling” section of the draft plan (CCSP, 2002, p. 47-52) articulates a much needed new direction for U.S. climate change science, reaching out beyond the business-as-usual approach of the GCRP to provide tangible decision support resources. This section is insightful, reasonably well focused, and well grounded with respect to the priorities for climate modeling research and applications over the next decade. It also shows considerable understanding of the research required to produce some of the key mandated improvements in climate modeling skill, particularly in quantifying climate sensitivity, as well as a keen awareness of the growing but embryonic multi-organization collaborative efforts in applied and theoretical climate change modeling.

The applied climate modeling discussion could be improved by strengthening its treatment of several substantial challenges to meeting the ambitious goals it sets forward.

  • The rigidly stated four-year deadline to produce a substantial reduction in climate sensitivity uncertainty is optimistic and likely unrealistic, mostly because of the daunting challenges remaining in understanding and modeling the physics of cloud-radiation feedbacks.

  • This section sidesteps the challenge of making connections between the applied climate modeling results and climate impacts researchers, decision makers, resource managers, and other consumers of climate change information. Serious capacity building is necessary, particularly with respect to increasing the capability and number of researchers producing and receiving the model results. In addition, this section does not adequately address how the applied climate modeling activities will be coordinated with the more theoretical model improvements called for under the GCRP.

  • The draft plan is unclear about how the National Center for Atmospheric Research-Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory partnership will be directed (e.g., will its focus be on conducting Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections; facilitating the transition of research results into operational code; refining projections so as to reduce uncertainties in climate sensitivity; preparing model projections for local, regional, and national decision makers; or some combination of these?). The current modeling community will not be able to make substantial near-term progress on all of these fronts, and prioritization will be necessary.

  • The section does not adequately address the serious mismatch between existing supercomputer resources and those needed to implement the proposed applied modeling program. Neither the draft plan nor Our Changing Planet (GCRP, 2003) indicate that the CCSP intends to seek sufficient funding to address these limitations in the ability to produce and utilize climate projections.

  • The discussion of “Testing Against the Climate Record” understates the challenges in these endeavors. Operational satellites have had difficulty in producing reliable measurements of atmospheric temperature trends (NRC, 2000d). The CCSP should strive to ensure that

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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future satellite systems improve upon the recognized climate monitoring deficiencies of the existing system (NRC, 2000b; 2000c). The proposal to test contemporary climate-change models against the paleoclimate record needs to be more specific to overcome ongoing data and interpretive challenges with this type of analysis.

Recommendation: The discussion of applied climate modeling should be revised to better describe how models will be incorporated into the broader suite of decision support activities and to better address the key challenges to attaining the applied climate modeling goals set forward in the plan.

Existing Decision Support Assets

The draft strategic plan does not adequately utilize many prior assessments and consensus reports that have provided scientific information to decision makers. There are numerous examples of GCRP research supporting assessments and interactions with decision makers and industry on environmental issues. While the plan refers to some of these reports with regard to natural science issues relating to the climate, these reports are not used as examples of success or failure in applied climate studies, including efforts to assess regional impacts, or in interactions with a wide range of user communities. In this respect the plan might build on lessons learned from the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (NAST, 2001), the IPCC process (e.g., IPCC, 2001a, b), and other environmental assessment undertakings. The draft plan deals with many issues that were addressed in the U.S. National Assessment, but the document is not referenced, nor is it used fully in the human dimensions and decision support sections of the draft plan (e.g., scenario development). No matter what the evaluation of the U.S. National Assessment, there were many valuable lessons learned from it in terms of regional impact studies and interactions with stakeholders. These lessons should not be ignored in the CCSP strategic plan.

The plan does not use as a model what the United Nations Environment Programme/World Meteorological Organization (UNEP/WMO) or IPCC assessments have accomplished in terms of decision support, applied science, and stakeholder participation. The UNEP/WMO ozone assessments have had fifteen years of highly successful interaction with governments as Parties to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. While the IPCC assessments are referenced and used to justify the CCSP, the lessons learned, among others the outstanding success in communicating with governments around the world, are overlooked. For example, the IPCC aviation assessment (IPCC, 1999) was successful in involving scientists, industries, governments, and intergovernmental regulators (i.e., International Civil Aviation Organization) in evaluating options for future aviation. In many aspects climate science has already succeeded in communicating with stakeholders and in being used in policy decisions, but the CCSP does not take advantage of these successes.

In identifying the relevant decision makers and their needs the CCSP also should build on decades of work in this area by various government agencies, such as the Energy Information Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Weather Service and Office of Global Programs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) various ozone assessments. Research needs regarding vulnerability, key risk areas, and interactions with stakeholders can be gleaned from the regional and sectoral findings of the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (NAST, 2001), the IPCC report from Working Group II, Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (IPCC, 2001a), and the experiences of past GCRP programs that have supported research and delivery of information to stakeholders, such as NOAA’s Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA), NASA’s Regional Earth Science Application Center, and NSF’s Science and Technology Center programs. In particular, the RISA program has dealt with climate impacts and delivery of regional climate and environmental information on all time scales to stakeholders in various regions of the United States, while the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (the IRI), in cooperation with U.S. Agency for International Development has encouraged similar capacity building in developing countries. These programs could form the kernel of a future “research-to-operations” system that would be focused on understanding the decision context and informing decisions at regional scales.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should build upon the lessons learned in applied climate studies and stakeholder interaction from prior environmental and climate assessment activities.

CAPACITY BUILDING TO IMPLEMENT THE STRATEGIC PLAN

The draft strategic plan calls for many research and decision support advances, including a greatly strengthened climate modeling infrastructure to address local, regional, national, and international needs; increased collaboration on key scientific challenges; a significantly upgraded global climate observing system, including climate-quality data management; and a suite of sophisticated informational products for decision makers who in many cases are new to climate change science. The draft plan does not evaluate the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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size, scope, and training of appropriate research and stakeholder communities necessary to address these issues or approaches for taking advantage of resources that do exist. The infrastructure requirements to support the transition from research results to operational prediction are also not addressed. For example, support will be needed to bring together in one facility diverse researchers, including observers, process study scientists, modelers, computer programmers, social scientists, and those who represent end users. The committee believes that the CCSP faces a major challenge in systematically developing institutional infrastructure, growing new cross-disciplinary intellectual talent, nurturing networks of diverse perspectives and capabilities, and fostering successful transition from research to decision support applications. In general this capacity building is a long-term activity, but significant progress can be made in the short term with strategic investments.

In both the social sciences and the natural sciences there is considerable knowledge that has the potential to make major contributions to the current and long-term goals of the CCSP, however that knowledge has not yet been fully applied to these goals, nor has the broad set of interfaces between these disciplines been addressed. The necessary personnel to execute an enhanced level of research cannot be assumed to exist, particularly for research problems that cross disciplinary boundaries. In a number of fields, particularly in the social sciences, there are relatively few researchers in the position to undertake climate research. Furthermore, it takes years to increase workforce capacity. The achievement of these capacity-building goals will require systematic investments over a long period of time.

A second capacity-building challenge for the CCSP is to educate the stakeholder community so that it can effectively use the CCSP research products. This key aspect of the linkage between the scientific community and stakeholders is addressed further in Chapter 5 of this report.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should explicitly address the major requirements in building capacity in human resources that are implied in the plan.

Another type of capacity building is necessary to acquire and develop the computing, communication, and information management resources necessary both to conduct the extensive climate modeling called for in the draft strategic plan and to process and store the large amounts of data to be collected from a greatly expanded observation network. Applied climate modeling and especially the crucial regional-to-global scale climate change scenarios will require substantially enhanced supercomputer powers. Improvements in research models need to be tested before transition to operational models; this testing requires substantial computing resources. Further effort would be required to develop products responsive to decision makers and other users. The draft plan says nothing about what these computing requirements might be or how the CCSP might obtain them. This omission in the plan comes despite its reference to how two recent NRC reports (NRC, 1998 and 2001c) identified the hardware and software challenges facing the U.S. climate modeling capabilities (CCSP, 2002, p. 139).

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should provide details about how the CCSP will acquire the computing resources necessary to achieve its goals.

FINANCIAL RESOURCES FOR IMPLEMENTING THE PLAN

The committee was asked to consider whether the results and deliverables identified in the draft strategic plan are realistic given available resources. Because the draft strategic plan does not include details about present and projected levels of support for each program element and because the fiscal year 2004 budget request was not available to the committee during its deliberations, it had limited information to evaluate this question. Nonetheless, it is clear that the scope of activities described in the draft strategic plan is greatly enlarged over what has been supported in the past through the GCRP. It includes a greatly strengthened climate modeling infrastructure increased collaboration; a significantly upgraded global climate observing system; and a suite of sophisticated informational products for decision makers. As discussed in the previous section, implementing this expanded suite of activities will require significant investments in infrastructure and human resources and therefore will necessitate either greatly increased funding for the CCSP or a major reprioritization and cutback in existing programs.

Shortly after this report entered National Academies’ review, the President’s fiscal year 2004 budget request was made publicly available. It includes $182 million for the CCRI (compared to the fiscal year 2003 budget request of $40 million) within a total CCSP budget request of $1749 million (compared to the fiscal year 2003 budget request of $1747 million). The committee has not had the opportunity to analyze the fiscal year 2004 budget request in detail. Even so, a cursory review of the proposed budget indicates that the CCSP has chosen to increase funding for CCRI at the expense of existing GCRP program elements (or simply relabeled some activities previously considered part of the GCRP as CCRI activities) and has shifted funds from one agency to another.

Even if program funding increases, CCSP management will continue to be faced with many funding decisions, such as which new programs should be initiated (and when), whether any existing programs should be scaled back or discontinued, how to balance short-term and longer-term commitments, and how to balance support for international

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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and U.S. programs. As discussed in Chapter 2 of this report, these resource allocation decisions must be based on the goals and priorities of the program, which should be clearly described in the revised strategic plan. The independent advisory body recommended by the committee in Chapter 4 of this report also should be used to inform such decisions. The committee believes it is essential for the CCSP to move forward with the important new elements of CCRI while preserving crucial parts of existing GCRP programs.

Recommendation: The CCSP should use the clear goals and program priorities of the revised strategic plan and advice from the independent advisory body recommended by the committee to guide future funding decisions.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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4
Managing and Guiding the Program

Are mechanisms for coordinating and integrating issues that involve multiple disciplines and multiple agencies adequately described?

Chapter 15 of the draft strategic plan describes the management structures and processes that have been established to coordinate and integrate federal research and technology development in the area of global climate change. The management structure (see Figure 1.1) includes the following major components:

  • A cabinet-level Committee on Climate Change Science and Technology Integration;

  • An Interagency Working Group on Climate Change Science and Technology;

  • An interagency Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) whose draft strategic plan is the subject of this report; and

  • An interagency Climate Change Technology Program (CCTP).

Chapter 15 of the draft plan also describes several management processes that will be used to implement, evaluate, and guide the program (see CCSP, 2002, p. 162-166), and calls for the development of a new mechanism to improve the integration of program elements that are not central to the core missions of participating agencies.11 In the sections that follow, the committee examines elements of this management framework and offers advice on how they could be improved in the revised strategic plan.

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

The committee is concerned that the existing management and program links between the CCSP and CCTP may not be sufficient to take advantage of the synergies between these two programs. This may be due in part to CCTP’s early stage of development. Generally, a program to define a massive problem (i.e., the CCSP) and a program to develop options for solution to the problem (i.e., the CCTP) should be guided by a common strategy, and this does not appear to be the case for the CCSP and CCTP yet. At the very least the results from each program should be used to guide the project portfolio of the other. Elements of the CCTP program will need to build upon the findings of the CCSP program. Technology solution options should be pursued for the highest-risk problems and informed by the most robust knowledge of those problems. Likewise, the impacts of implementing various solutions (e.g., sequestration, hydrogen-based fuels) should be studied as an integral part of technology development. On the other hand, there are many human dimensions, economic analysis, and decision support functions in the CCSP that critically depend on a deep understanding of the technologies and options that are being developed to address climate and associated global changes. These include the rate of diffusion of new technologies, the cost and impact of new technologies or policy drivers, and the development of realistic scenarios for anything other than business-as-usual baselines for the next 5 to 10 years.

The Interagency Working Group on Climate Change Science and Technology is responsible for coordinating the CCSP with the CCTP at the highest level, and this group may be able to foster some of the synergies described above. The committee believes that more potential benefits of these types of synergies would be realized if there were also direct coordination of some individual components of the CCSP and CCTP.

11  

“The past decade has shown that research on climate and global change often includes components that do not fall neatly into the core mission of any one of the participating agencies, are entirely new program needs, or are key to the integration of separate agency activities…One necessary approach for addressing such integrating activities is to develop a mechanism that allows functions that are not central to the core missions of the participating agencies, but that are highly relevant, to be fostered” (CCSP, 2002, p. 165).

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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Recommendation: The CCSP should assess the scientific implications of the technologies under consideration by the CCTP and develop realistic scenarios for climate and associated global changes with these technologies in mind. The program management chapter of the revised CCSP strategic plan should clearly describe mechanisms for coordinating and linking its activities with the technology development activities of the CCTP.

INTERAGENCY MANAGEMENT

The management of an interagency program involving 13 agencies, each with a separate mission and history of independent efforts on issues of climate and global change, is a challenging task. The GCRP has been criticized in the past for being unable to do much beyond encouraging multi-agency cooperation and support because it lacked the authority to redirect long standing programs and mandates of individual agencies (NRC, 2001d). The new CCSP management structure announced by President Bush in February 2002 is designed to address this problem by providing a level of accountability and direction that was missing from the GCRP. In particular, the cabinet-level Committee on Climate Change Science and Technology Integration is responsible for providing “recommendations concerning climate science and technology to the President, and if needed, recommend the movement of funding and programs across agency boundaries” (GCRP, 2003, p. 11). An Interagency Working Group on Climate Change and Technology, composed of departmental and agency representatives at the deputy secretary level, reports to the cabinet-level committee and is responsible for making recommendations about the “funding level and focus” of the CCSP and the CCTP (CCSP, 2002, p. 162-163). The CCSP itself, an interagency group composed of representatives from all agencies that have a research mission in climate and global change, reports to the deputy-secretary level working group and is responsible for “effective management of the coordinated interagency research program” (CCSP, 2002, p. 163). Interagency committees of program managers for each major research element are responsible for interagency coordination and implementation at the program element level.

Responsibility for Managing the Program

The creation of the cabinet-level committee with the authority to shift resource among agencies to meet the goals of the CCSP (if necessary) is an improvement over past approaches to managing the GCRP. However, the interagency approach to managing the program at all levels, from the cabinet-level committee to the individual program element, may not be enough to ensure that agencies cooperate toward the common goals of the CCSP because no individual is clearly identified in the draft plan as having responsibility for managing the program as a whole. Of particular importance are those crosscutting program elements that involve multiple agencies. Chapter 15 of the draft plan on “Program Management and Review” does not describe the responsibilities and authorities of the CCSP leadership adequately.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should describe the management processes to be used to foster agency cooperation toward common CCSP goals. The revised plan also should clearly describe the responsibilities of the CCSP leadership.

Descriptions of Agency Responsibilities

The plan does not describe the specific responsibilities and authorities of contributing agencies, such as which entity will be responsible for implementing the work. Defining responsibilities is particularly important for new areas of research that have not been supported by the GCRP in the past, such as land-use and land-cover change and decision support. This also is important for crosscutting research elements, notably water cycle and ecosystems research, which are currently carried out within multiple agencies. The plan includes no clear delineation of which agency will do what, and in particular, which agency(ies) or program(s) will lead the proposed expansion of these crosscutting research areas.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should more clearly outline agency responsibilities for implementing the research.

Participation of Mission Agencies

Another management challenge for the CCSP is to foster the participation of mission-oriented agencies in the strategic planning process. The committee believes that mission oriented agencies—such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, water resources and land management agencies within Department of the Interior, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the extension and farm program agencies within U.S. Department of Agriculture—could make important contributions to identifying research needs, collaborating on research problems, and testing research and modeling results. Because these agencies apparently played little, if any, role in the creation of the current strategic plan, the plan overlooks resources that might be available to its ambitious agenda.

Recommendation: The CCSP should encourage participation of those agencies whose research or operational responsibilities would strengthen the ability of the program to deliver products that serve national needs.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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EXTERNAL GUIDANCE

The draft plan describes how the CCSP intends to use scientific steering committees composed of outside experts to help guide program elements. Advisory committees already exist for most of the agency science programs and some interagency programs (e.g., the carbon cycle and the water cycle). Such committees are especially useful for new program elements. There is also a stated desire to continue to receive advice and review from appropriate NRC committees and boards. These processes are valuable for scientific guidance on program goals, research approaches, and evaluating the usefulness and credibility of products.

Notwithstanding the value of these activities, the committee believes that the most difficult of the research management challenges will occur at the level of the CCSP program itself. Thus, there will be a need for scientific and other stakeholder guidance at the level of the program to ensure that clear priorities are established and communicated, that progress toward meeting the subsequent goals can be evaluated, and that the inevitable trade-offs in resources and allocation of time can be done with an eye toward meeting the most important of the overall program goals. Otherwise there will be a tendency for the individual needs and priorities of the agencies to take precedence over the needs of the entire program.

Recommendation: The CCSP should establish a standing advisory body charged with independent oversight of the entire program.

SUMMARY

Successful coordination and integration of CCSP activities will require clearly delineated lines of authority, requisite accountability by participating agencies, and appropriate staffing and funding. As the implementing and coordinating body for this effort, the CCSP will need the ability to direct other agencies’ efforts and hold them accountable for performance and coordination. The success of the CCSP will also require the support and oversight of the Committee on Climate Change Science and Technology Integration and the Interagency Working Group on Climate Change Science and Technology, as well as the continued guidance of independent advisory bodies.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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5
Enhancing Linkages and Communication

Does the plan adequately describe the roles of the public, private sector, academia, state/local governments, and international communities, and linkages among these communities?

Does the written document describing the program effectively communicate with both stakeholders and the scientific community?

Is the question format for driving the research program effective?

The committee addresses these questions in the context of its analysis of the Climate Change Science Program’s (CCSP’s) efforts to establish linkages with and outreach to various stakeholder groups including the scientific community. The strategic plan itself does not include explicit statements articulating the program’s view of the roles of the public, private sector, academia, state and local governments, and international communities, so one answer to the first part of the first question above would be “no.” Based on references in the draft plan to these stakeholder groups (e.g., CCSP, 2002, p. 149ff), the committee inferred the CCSP’s view of their respective roles. This chapter starts by addressing the first two questions above for each of the following major stakeholder groups: (1) decision makers, (2) the international community, (3) the public, and (4) scientists; the third question is addressed later in this chapter. The committee will provide more detailed analysis of the strategic planning process, including its analysis of the December planning workshop, in its second report.

DECISION MAKERS

As discussed in Chapter 3 of this report and as identified repeatedly at the December planning workshop, one overarching weakness of the draft strategic plan is its treatment of decision support. Whereas the plan frequently refers to decision support resources, these resources are not defined beyond “providing the needed information” to policy and other decision makers. This approach implies strongly that the role of decision makers is primarily as passive recipients of information. For example, Chapter 13 of the draft plan focuses on describing one-way communication from researchers to various end users who may or may not have previously identified these information needs. This general weakness of the plan applies to decision makers of all types and can be addressed in the revised plan by drawing on lessons learned in previous assessment activities (see Chapter 3 of this report).

The plan lacks specificity about which decision makers it serves, how the CCSP will connect with them, and what types of decisions they will need to make. There are many different stakeholders both inside and outside of the federal government whose needs may vary considerably. When decision makers are mentioned in the plan, however, only two general communities of decision makers are mentioned (e.g., see CCSP, 2002, p. 41-42): federal policy makers with responsibility for emission mitigation decisions and officials (at what government level is unclear) in charge of natural resource management decisions. These two groups have different information needs; the first group requires knowledge of the projected costs and benefits of different emissions control scenarios, while the second is more concerned with understanding climate variability so as to develop adaptation strategies and to respond to current climate conditions, such as in water resource management. The plan needs to clearly indicate how its research activities will support both of these types of decisions, as well as those for a broader suite of stakeholders.

The strategic plan does not adequately consider the participation of state and local officials. Users of climate information at the local, state, and regional levels rely primarily on local officials and experts, not on federal officials. If the CCSP’s outreach endeavors are to be successful, it is important for federal agencies to work closely with regional and state climate institutions that can directly help educate and interact with state government,

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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the private sector, and the general public. Indeed, some mission agencies (e.g., those under the Department of the Interior) already have state and local officers addressing climate issues, but these agencies do not yet participate in the CCSP (see Chapter 4 of this report [Appendix A]).

The plan’s treatment of the private sector is also limited. Many sectors of the U.S. economy stand to be affected seriously or even restructured by policies employed to respond to climate change. Others can benefit greatly from improved climate information (e.g., from seasonal to interannual forecasts) and from new opportunities in adaptation to and mitigation of climate change (e.g., through developing new climate mitigation technologies). In addition, commercial development and implementation of most of the technology to address climate change will be carried out by the business community. Yet the plan barely mentions the private sector and when it does, its role is solely as a passive recipient of information generated by the program (e.g., CCSP, 2002, p. 151). Government decisions based on information to be provided by the CCSP are likely to be more successful if the private sector is engaged throughout the research and planning process.

Although the text in places recognizes the importance of engaging stakeholders in the preparation and review of long-term strategic plans, the plan needs to state explicitly that stakeholders should be included where appropriate throughout the research planning, execution, and results review process. Furthermore, the draft plan does not capitalize on the NRC report Making Climate Forecasts Matter (NRC, 1999c), which includes recommendations for using the decision sciences to communicate climate issues to stakeholders and other interested parties. Without employing two-way and deliberative communication the plan presents an outmoded and unsuccessful model of stakeholder engagement and public involvement.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should identify which categories of decision makers the CCSP serves and describe how the program will improve two-way communication with them.

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

The committee believes that the draft plan misses an opportunity to develop a forward-looking strategy for improving international research networks and assessments. These concepts are mentioned in Chapter 14 of the draft plan, but not in a strategic way. The value of multi-national research networks has been demonstrated in several ongoing agency programs and in international organizations. For example, research conducted under the GCRP during the last 10 years has demonstrated considerable science leadership in international global change programs, particularly the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Program on Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IHDP), and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). The issue for the CCSP is how to leverage the many governmental and nongovernmental organizations to develop capacity and ongoing regional networks of international scientists collaborating with U.S. scientists. Without a defined strategy it is unlikely that the full benefits of such approaches will be achieved.

International collaboration is needed for building better in situ calibration and validation of observations, for obtaining more globally distributed measurements, and for building synergy and reducing redundancy in the deployment of observation assets. The meteorological community offers a good example of international collaboration, with assignment of responsibilities for making measurements and data-sharing protocols arranged at an intergovernmental level under the World Meteorological Organization. The climate community lacks a similar structure. The U.S. climate community has not even identified which agency serves as the central contact for international partners on climate research issues, including coordinated observing arrays, intercalibration, capacity building, and data and product sharing.

Most of the world community recognizes that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) approach to involving governments directly in the scientific assessments has been a success. It has acted to denationalize scientific knowledge, an objective that individual national assessments cannot always meet. The value of international assessments over national assessments lies in three factors: (1) by engaging a majority of the world’s experts on the relevant scientific questions, such assessments can attain higher scientific quality and are better able to withstand partisan attacks; (2) national assessments risk the perception or actuality of being subordinated to national policy priorities; and (3) by rendering competing parallel assessments scientifically superfluous, well done international assessments control the risk that minor or unintentional disparities in coverage, emphasis, or tone between parallel national assessments are exploited to exaggerate scientific disagreement in policy negotiations. The CCSP should acknowledge such successes in science-policy interactions in its revised strategic plan.

The overall sense of insularity of the plan itself may hinder efforts to improve linkages with the international community. In particular, portions of the draft plan focus so strongly on decision support in the United States, on land cover in the United States, on the carbon cycle in the United States, and so forth that it is not at all clear what the balance may be between focusing on the United States itself and sponsoring research that is relevant to the rest of the world. Of most concern is that the plan does not discuss how it intends to provide information to the IPCC. While there is no evidence of any such nationalism in the GCRP research community, the perception of insularity in the draft plan is

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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of concern to the committee on two fronts. Scientifically, there is a danger that the emphasis on U.S. issues and resources will result in agencies choosing not to work in geographic regions outside the United States that are significant for understanding particularly important processes. The second issue relates to participation in international climate change research. The United States has been the source of about half the global research investment historically and a leader in many activities internationally, yet there is little discussion in the draft strategic plan of how and whether the U.S. program will participate in international arenas. This insular approach could alienate international contributions to U.S. science.

Recommendation: The revised strategic plan should clearly describe how the CCSP will contribute to and benefit from international research collaborations and assessments.

PUBLIC

The draft strategic plan appropriately recognizes the importance of efforts to communicate with the public and to promote outreach for K-12 education. Chapter 13 of the draft plan accurately describes the need for improved public understanding of climate change, and lists a number of mechanisms that could be used for this purpose. Though important, the recommendations for action in Chapter 13 of the plan are so broad and without prioritization that it will be difficult to accomplish all or even many of them. The revised chapter on communications and outreach should better identify which recommendations have the highest priorities and which agency has the responsibility for ensuring that they are carried out.

The committee notes that the draft plan itself, with its dense prose, is not easily accessible to intelligent nonexperts, and certainly not to laypersons. The draft plan would communicate with the public much more effectively if it included clearly articulated vision, goals, and priorities for the program, as discussed in Chapter 2 of this report.

SCIENTISTS

The draft strategic plan makes clear that the scientific community will play important roles in carrying out research and in advising the program through scientific advisory processes. The program has established strong linkages and two-way communication with the scientific community in general. An indication of this was the strong representation of the scientific community at the December planning workshop, with the exception of some areas of science that have not traditionally received funding from the GCRP. The document itself is generally effective in communicating with the scientific community about problems and research areas. As discussed in Chapter 2 of this report, however, the plan could be more effective in conveying to the scientific community an integrated, reasoned “strategic plan” for climate change and associated global change science.

EFFECTIVENESS OF QUESTION FORMAT

The committee commends the authors for focusing each chapter on a short list of questions or problems, and believes that this should be done consistently throughout the strategic plan. The committee found the question format particularly effective in dealing with well-specified tasks related to improved understanding of physical and chemical processes. The format was less effective in dealing with issues that cross several chapters, such as those related to human dimensions and decision support tasks, which should be better integrated into relevant chapters.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The committee commends the CCSP for undertaking the challenging task of developing a strategic plan, an important first step in enhancing how the program communicates with its wide range of stakeholders. The current draft of the plan represents a good start to the process. Further, the CCSP has made genuine overtures to researchers and the broader stakeholder community to gain feedback on the draft strategic plan and how to improve it. The planning workshop in December 2002 attracted hundreds of attendees. The workshop summaries presented by the program’s leaders (see <http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/workshop2002/closingsession>) indicated that they were attentive to the issues raised by the workshop participants. In addition to the workshop, the CCSP established a mechanism for interested parties to submit written comments on the draft plan. These efforts indicate a strong interest on the part of the CCSP to develop a plan that is consistent with current scientific thinking and is responsive to the nation’s needs for information on climate and associated global changes.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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References

CCSP (U.S. Climate Change Science Program). 2002. Strategic Plan for the Climate Change Science Program (draft). November. Online at <http://www.climatescience.gov>.


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DOE. 1980. Workshop on Environmental and Societal Consequences of a Possible CO2-Induced Climate Change. Conducted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, April 2-6, 1979, Annapolis, Md. Washington, D.C.: DOE.


ESSC (Earth System Sciences Committee). 1986. Earth System Science. Overview. Washington, D.C.: Advisory Council, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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GCRP (U.S. Global Change Research Program). 2002. Our Changing Planet: The FY 2002 U.S. Global Change Research Program. Washington, D.C.: White House Printing Office.

GCRP. 2003. Our Changing Planet: The FY 2003 U.S. Global Change Research Program and Climate Change Research Initiative. Washington, D.C.: White House Printing Office.


IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 1999. Aviation and the Global Atmosphere: A Special Report of Working Groups I and III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, eds. J.E. Penner, D.H. Lister, D.J. Griggs, D.J. Dokken, and M. McFarland. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

IPCC. 2001a. Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, eds. J.J. McCarthy, O.F. Canziani, N.A. Leary, D.J. Dokken, and K.S. White. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

IPCC. 2001b. Climate Change 2001: Mitigation, eds. B. Metz, O. Davidson, R. Swart, and J. Pan. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

IPCC. 2001c. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, eds. J.T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell, and C.A. Johnson. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.


NAST (National Assessment Synthesis Team). 2001. Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change. Report for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

NRC (National Research Council). 1983. Toward an International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 1986. Global Change in the Geosphere-Biosphere. Initial Priorities for an IGBP. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 1996. Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 1999a. Adequacy of Climate Observing Systems. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 1999b. Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 1999c. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 1999d. Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 2000a. From Research to Operations in Weather Satellites and Numerical Weather Prediction: Crossing the Valley of Death. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 2000b. Issues in the Integration of Research and Operational Satellite Systems for Climate Research: I. Science and Design. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 2000c. Issues in the Integration of Research and Operational Satellite Systems for Climate Research: II. Implementation. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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NRC. 2000d. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 2001a. Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 2001b. A Climate Services Vision: First Steps Toward the Future. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 2001c. Improving the Effectiveness of U.S. Climate Modeling. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 2001d. The Science of Regional and Global Change. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC. 2002. Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.


U.S. Congress, House, 1990. U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990. Public Law 101-606(11/16/90) 104 Stat. 3096-3104. Online at <http://www.gcrio.org/gcact1990.shtml>.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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Page 74
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×
Page 75
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
×
Page 76
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Excerpts from Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Science Program Strategic Plan." National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10635.
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Page 77
Next: Appendix B: Statement of Task »
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The report reviews a draft strategic plan from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, a program formed in 2002 to coordinate and direct U.S. efforts in climate change and global change research. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program incorporates the decade-old Global Change Research Program and adds a new component -- the Climate Change Research Initiative -- whose primary goal is to "measurably improve the integration of scientific knowledge, including measures of uncertainty, into effective decision support systems and resources."

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