The federal government's climate change research program should broaden its focus to include research that supports actions needed to cope with climate change-related problems that impact society, while building on its successful research to improve understanding of the causes and processes of climate change, says a new report from the National Research Council (NRC).

Researcher Maria Carmen Lemos of the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) was on the committee that evaluated the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) over a three-year period. The committee released its second and final report Thursday.

The report identified six priorities for a restructured climate change research program: establish a U.S. climate observing system; develop new modeling capabilities for regional- and decadal-scale forecasts; strengthen research on adaptation, mitigation and vulnerability; reorganize the program around integrated scientific-societal issues; initiate a periodic national assessment of climate impacts and responses; and routinely provide policymakers with crucial scientific information, tools and forecasts.

The priorities are very much in sync with the findings of the National Summit on Coping with Climate Change, hosted by SNRE in May 2007 and outlined in a book published last summer, said Rosina M. Bierbaum, the dean of SNRE who is currently on a year-long sabbatical with The World Bank. The U-M National Summit brought together leading scientists and scholars with key decision makers to address the options available to U.S. institutions, firms and societies for adapting and responding to climate change.

Dean Bierbaum added that the 10-year research plan developed at the end of the Clinton Administration - under her purview while leading OSTP - would have focused strongly on the six areas recommended by the latest NRC report. "The Bush administration discarded that plan and reverted to one much more focused on the physical and modeling sciences, and so adaptation, impacts and regional assessment work has languished for eight years," she said. "There is no more time for delay."

Environmentalists hope the Obama administration - through the OSTP and its new head John Holdren, who was briefed on the recommendations Wednesday - embraces the recommendations. But the committee's role was not to lobby for the change but instead to present the science behind the recommendations.

"We mostly said, ‘Here is where we need to go,' but it was not part of the committee's mandate to say how the federal government should organize its climate research program," Lemos said. "Having said that, there is a lot of hope that it will be influential with the new administration." On Wednesday, she was in Washington, D.C., with other committee members briefing members of Congress on the report.

The report is the second and final from the Committee on Strategic Advice on the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, as the committee is formally known. In the final report, the group was asked to identify future priorities and lay a framework to guide the program's evolution.

The committee found that the CCSP is hindered by its limited research into the social sciences - such as research on the role of human actions and behavior in changing climate and how societies can mitigate and adapt to the impacts - as well as the separation of natural and social sciences research.  For example, spending on human-dimensions research has never exceeded 3 percent of the CCSP research budget.  As a result, research, data collection and modeling of how people interact with or affect their environments have lagged behind corresponding activities on the physical climate system.  The program should make transformational changes to adopt a holistic approach that connects research across disciplines, as well as engages policymakers and other stakeholders, the committee concluded.

To Lemos, the report's most significant recommendation is that future research efforts be organized to integrate across the physical, natural and social sciences as well as across science and society. "The new focus should be on an end-to-end model that ranges from basic to applied science and that aims to inform policy in specific problem areas," she said.

Integrating research in the natural and social sciences should make it easier to tackle climate change problems that could directly impact communities, some of which include extreme weather and climate events and disasters; sea-level rise and melting ice; fresh water availability; agriculture and food security; ecosystems management; new and re-emerging diseases; and effects on the U.S. economy.  The knowledge gained from this integrative approach would guide the nation on choices to reduce the costs and risks of climate change impacts, and provide early warning of changes that are abrupt and large enough to push climate and human systems past tipping points.

"Another priority very close you my heart (and SNRE's) is enhancing significantly research on vulnerability, adaptation and mitigation," Lemos added. The report recommends both immediately jump-starting the research that is already being carried out and expanding this area of research significantly into a comprehensive program that meets urgent needs.

Moreover, targeted research in the natural sciences could help meet various community needs for climate information and services, such as drought forecasts for a particular region.  These research initiatives would help address societal concerns of direct relevance to the program and provide a concrete focus for collecting human-dimensions data, the committee noted.

About three years ago, Lemos was asked to join the joined the committee. At the NRC, she is also a member of the Human Dimensions of Environmental Change Committee-one of its standing committees with another three-year appointment.

As research attention shifts toward the impact climate change has on societies, more information is needed at regional-to-local scales.  CCSP should develop and implement a strategy to improve modeling of regional climate change and initialize seasonal to decadal climate forecasting, the report states.  The program should also support a new generation of coupled human-land-ocean-atmosphere models that would "improve predictions at these scales and help bridge the gap between science and decision making," according to the report.

Moreover, CCSP should work with stakeholders to design and implement a comprehensive national assessment that identifies evolving science and societal needs.  While CCSP is mandated to carry out a national assessment every four years, the last one involving a broad range of stakeholders was completed a decade ago.  The collection of 21 synthesis and assessment reports published from 2006 to 2008 -- although useful -- did not add up to a comprehensive national assessment.

In 2007, the committee issued its first report, which evaluated CCSP's progress at the request of the program's former director (see earlier SNRE news release). That report, titled "Evaluating Progress of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program: Methods and Preliminary Results," concluded that:

• Discovery science (driven by curiosity rather than by practical applications) and understanding of the climate system are proceeding well, but use of that knowledge to support decision making and to manage risks and opportunities of climate change is proceeding slowly.
• Progress in understanding and predicting climate change has improved more at global, continental and ocean basin scales than at regional and local scales.
• Understanding of the impacts of climate changes on human well-being and vulnerabilities is much less developed than understanding of the natural climate system.
• Observations have fueled advances in climate change science and applications, but many existing and planned observing systems have been cancelled, delayed or degraded, which threatens future progress.
• Progress in communicating CCSP results and engaging stakeholders (those either contributing to or using the results of the program) is inadequate.
• The separation of CCSP program leadership and its budget authority presents a serious obstacle to its progress.

The committee's latest report is being compiled in a forthcoming, 178-page book titled "Restructuring Federal Climate Research to Meet the Challenges of Climate Change" and published by the National Academies Press. It is already viewable in .pdf format at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12595

See related stories and links:
View SNRE's Climate Change news and research site
More on Associate Professor Maria Carmen Lemos
NRC press release announcing the committee's report
View the full NRC report: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12595

For more information, contact

Kevin Merrill
SNRE
O: 734.936.2447
C: 734.417.7392
E-mail: merrillk@umich.edu