Planning Climate and Global Change Research A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan (2003) / Chapter Skim
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Part II Detailed Comments: 6 Comments on Individual Chapters
Part II Detailed Comments: 6 Comments on Individual Chapters
Pages 39-64
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Part IT Detailed Comments ~6
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The committee was asked to address the following three questions for each "major topical area" of the plan: 1. Does the plan reflect current scientific and technical understanding?
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This work would appear to be excellent GCRP-type research receiving high priority in Chapters 9 and 11, but by itself it is unlikely to significantly reduce the uncertainty in projecting atmospheric carbon dioxide abundances and, as for aerosols, a more comprehensive CCRI synthesis of the global carbon cycle is needed. Question 3a fails to capture the broad scope of the water cycle and its associated feedbacks.
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. PLANNING CLIMATE AND GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH For Question 3a, the apparent objective, "Basic understanding of the processes that control atmospheric water vapor and clouds must be improved and incorporated in models," has high merit and has been a goal for many years.
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Efforts to evaluate data trends and project future conditions through biological and ecological modeling also need to be included in the revised plan. Importantly, design of this observation system needs to be dovetailed with planned research in the ecosystems, carbon cycle, human dimensions, land use and land cover change, and other chapters.
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The committee considers this one of the most promising and PLANNING CLIMATE AND GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH innovative features of the draft plan. Building and using this capacity will require 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.
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. 45 The chapter does not adequately distinguish between research to develop new decision support tools or understanding and operational decision support activities.
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The challenges are even greater for those uncertainties associated with regional climate change projections. PLANNING CLIMATE AND GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH Second, this section sidesteps an even greater challenge to the climate science community: to make connections between the applied climate modeling results and the climate impacts research community, and on to decision makers, resource managers, and other consumers of climate change information.This is much easier said than done (e.g., see From Research to Operations in Weather Satellites and Numerical Weather Prediction.
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Does the plan reflect current scientific and technical understanding? (Theme 3)
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. The committee recognizes that this chapter is not intended to be a thorough review of all the science pertaining to atmospheric composition, and that these topics are included implicitly in the scientific PLANNING CLIMATE AND GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH problems addressed (and we hope in more detailed actions plans to follow)
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Rather than just quote linkages at the end, it would be more useful to describe each specific, top-priority research objective and how it involves linkages with climate change, water cycle, ecosystems, land use, carbon cycle, and human dimensions (both in terms of forcing and impacts)
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(2) How do feedback processes control the interactions between the global water cycle and other parts of the climate system (e.g., carbon cycle, energy)
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The research topics closely correspond to those outlined in A Plan for a New Science Initiative on the Global Water Cycle (Hornberger et al., 2001) , with some additional research topics related to decision support.
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Similar interfaces exist with the other program elements in the GCRP portion of the plan, and are especially important for Chapter 6 on climate variability and change (e.g., to understand surface radiative properties) , Chapter 9 on the PLANNING CLIMATE AND GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH carbon cycle, and Chapter 10 on ecosystem structure and function.
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General Comments Chapter 9 of the draft strategic plan gives an excellent overview of the major challenges in carbon cycle science. It appropriately recognizes that the carbon cycle is a core element of biogeochemistry and that studies of the carbon cycle cut across many disciplines of Earth system science,
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The large-scale, long-term measurement campaigns and experiments in this plan will require significant PLANNING CLIMATE AND GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH multiyear funding commitment. More importantly, they are not just carbon cycle measurements but are also closely related to ecosystems research needs (Chapter 10 of the draft plan)
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The framework should sequence the research in ways that reflect the urgency of information needs for decision makers, giving priority to approaches for enhancing ecosystem resilience, ecological systems most at imminent risk, and ecosystems where rapid, near-term changes are likely to have the greatest socio-economic effects. Does the plan reflect current scientific and technical understanding?
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PLANNING CLIMATE AND GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH The discussion of research on options for sustaining and improving ecosystem goods and services (Question 3) misses an important opportunity to consider integrating scientific analyses of ecosystem function into ongoing large-scale efforts to manage ecosystems for societal benefits.
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Because of their significance to human dimensions research and decision making, it is disappointing that this chapter pays little attention to research questions about mitigation and adaptation, environmentally significant consumption, human preferences, institutions, economic analysis, and decision support tools. The lack of attention paid to research on consumption is a problem throughout the draft strategic plan because understanding consumption (e.g., of resources such as fuel, water, chemicals)
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The strategic plan should be much more specific as to the different types of users and stakeholders for climate science and global change research with much greater sensitivity and disaggregation with regard to the scale of decisions (not just national and regional but finer scaled to PLANNING CLIMATE AND GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH state, city, watershed, ecoregion, and other management and administrative units) , a sophisticated understanding of institutions, and the differentiated needs of the private and NGO sectors.
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At the least the plan could indicate those items that are considered to be of very high, high, and moderate priority, or something similar. Does the plan reflect current scientific and technical understanding?
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~PLANNING CLIMATE AND GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH unrealistic to expect the existing community of climate modelers to accomplish all the relevant objectives listed in Chapter 6 (repeated in Chapter 12) and also to build substantial new applied climate modeling capabilities.
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Participants at the December planning workshop called for more emphasis on regional variability issues and regional climate change research. Such emphasis brings climate change issues down to a local scale with demonstrable impacts on specific populations.
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The Climate Variability and Predictability program (CLIVAR) , a major international study under the World Climate Research Programme, is not mentioned in the chapter (though it is mentioned in Chapter 6 of the draft plan)
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program integration. The management structure includes the following major components 63 · 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 whose draft strategic plan is the subject of this report; and · an interagency Climate Change Technology Program.
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This is of particular concern for new areas of research that have not been supported by the GCRP in the past, such as land use and cover and decision support, and for crosscutting research areas, such as ecosystems, water cycle, role of the ocean, human dimensions, and international activities. The draft plan does not make clear how agency responsibilities are defined or whether there is a central point of contact within the GCRP when interfaces to the international community, such as in observing global atmospheric and oceanic variability and change, are essential.
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