Appendix B
Statement of Task

COMMITTEE TO ADVISE THE U.S. GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH PROGRAM

An expert committee will provide ongoing and focused advice to the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The committee will be broadly constituted to bring expertise in all the areas addressed by the multiagency, multidimensional USGCRP and will be supported by expertise housed in many units across the National Research Council. The committee will, over time, organize ongoing discussions, take on specific tasks, and issue reports.

In its role as a single entry source of contact to the National Research Council and source of strategic discussion with appropriate experts, the Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program will

1. Provide ongoing, integrated advice to the USGCRP on broad, program-wide issues when requested. This began with a review of the 2011 USGCRP Strategic Plan and will include other tasks such as a review of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) and evaluation of USGCRP progress toward its Strategic Plan objectives.
2. Provide a forum for informal interaction between the USGCRP and the relevant scientific communities.
3. Provide a forum for exchange of experience and insights for integrating across science communities and improving linkages between officials of the Program and the science communities.
4. Improve the internal coordination across existing and future NRC entities related to global change (including coordination across NAS, NAE, and IOM).
5. Help identify issues of importance for the global change research community. This implies a proactive role that goes beyond simply responding to requests from the USGCRP.
6. Interact with and help USGCRP with its international activities, such as shaping the future of relevant international global environmental change programs.
7. In addition to producing NRC reports as tasked, the committee may help develop other work requests and ensure that they are conducted by the appropriate NRC units in a collaborative fashion.

REPORT ON THE USGCRP SCIENCE AND RESEARCH ACCOMPLISHMENTS BASED ON THE PROGRAM’S ASSESSMENTS: STATEMENT OF TASK

The Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program will produce a short consensus report that provides a broad-brush review of the outputs of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) since its inception, focused on its assessments, which are the product of the USGCRP multiagency confederation. The report may include discussions of how the Program has evolved and transformed over time and how information is generated and distributed, as well as identifying areas of effort and/or mechanisms that have been most successful for the Program, and challenges faced by the Program, including gaps or disconnects in the Program’s output in response to its major areas of effort.

The report will be based on public documents only, and it is not intended to be an in-depth evaluation or review of this ambitious and dynamic interagency program.

The committee will draw upon (~30) reports produced by the Program (“Program outputs”) for this task, primarily focused on the assessments, the most prominent of which should be the three National Climate Assessments (NCA-1, -2, and -3), but also include the CCSP Synthesis and Assessment Products, and the most recent assessments on human health and food security. The strategic plans and the annual budgetary Our Changing Planet documents help serve to provide context for the assessments. The committee will commission background research to be done by an external consultant to help inform the committee’s writing of this short report.

On the basis of the reports described above, the committee’s report should address:

• In the context of the Program’s mission and mandates and as reflected in the Program’s outputs, what are the most significant and consequential science and research accomplishments of USGCRP?
• What lessons should be learned from these accomplishments with respect to future Program planning?