Updated 15 December 2006

OUR CHANGING PLANET
The U.S. Climate Change Science Program
for Fiscal Year 2007

A Report by the Climate Change Science Program and
The Subcommittee on Global Change Research
A Supplement to the President's Fiscal Year 2007 Budget

Also available:

PDF version of the NASA section of the report

HTML version of the NASA budget table

Links to related agency Web sites.

PDF version of the full report

The hardcopy version of this report is available free of charge from the GCRIO Online Catalog

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National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Principal Areas of Focus

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration provides worldwide science and technologyleadership to understand the integrated global Earth system through pioneering advancements of Earth system observations, research, and modeling enabled by satellites. NASA’s programs encompass virtually every element and component in the Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. NASA has the largest agency investment in the 13-agency Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), and the Science Mission Directorate Earth Science Division (ESD) is the NASA leader for CCSP.

ESD encompasses the global atmosphere from the surface of the land and sea to the top of thestratosphere; the global oceans including sea ice; all land surfaces including snow and ice; the solid Earth beneath the ocean and land; the ecosystems in the air, oceans, and land; and all the interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, land, snow, ice, and associated ecology, including humans. Themultitude of integrated global Earth system processes and their interactions have important time scales from hours to centuries that include weather over short- and long-term climate time periods, and have horizontal distances from kilometers (regional) to the entire globe. NASA’s Heliophysics Division contributes to integrated global Earth system science through studies of the Sun and the interaction of its radiation with the Earth’s upper atmosphere. ESD is rapidly advancing the knowledge for reliable determination of the predictability of many interrelated natural phenomena, including the societal impacts and feedback on natural and anthropogenic phenomena. ESD accelerates the realization ofsocietal benefits from knowledge of how, when, where, and why different regions of the globe experience non-uniform environmental variability, which is important for economic growth, environmentalsustainability, national security, and homeland security. ESD continues the NASA tradition of creating breakthrough scientific and technological advancements on enormously challenging issues such asglobal climate change.

ESD programs are also embodied in several Presidential interagency initiatives that complement the
climate initiative, including the “U.S. Ocean Action Plan” (17 December 2004) and the “Strategic Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System” (6 April 2005). ESD applies knowledge of global Earth system science obtained through space-based observations and research to improve quality oflife through enhanced capabilities for prediction and mitigation of the effects of environmentalhazards.

ESD pioneered the interdisciplinary field of integrated global Earth system science, which explores the global interactions among land, oceans, atmosphere, ice, and life. To study these interactions, ESD developed and deployed the constellation of Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites named Aqua, Aura, Terra, GRACE, Jason, QuikScat, TRMM, and others, along with aircraft- and surface-based sensors for extensive calibration and validation required for the development of climate-quality satellite measurements. ESD created the world’s largest data and information system for collecting, processing, archiving, and distributing EOS data.

ESD focuses on integrated global Earth system science through observation, research, and modeling enabled by satellites, and technology development to address the overarching question “How is the Earth changing, and what are the consequences for life on Earth?” Five subordinate questions describe ESD’s integrated global Earth system science approach:

How is the global Earth system changing?
What are the primary causes of change in the Earth system?
How does the Earth system respond to natural and human-induced change?
What are the consequences of change in the Earth system for human civilization?
How well can we predict future changes in the Earth system?

To accomplish integrated global Earth system science, ESD organized focus areas—some of which are shown in the accompanying table, aligned with the CCSP elements. Other focus areas are Weather and the Earth Surface and Interior, as well as a cross-cutting theme of Earth system science education and literacy.

CCSP RESEARCH
ELEMENTS NASA EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE FOCUS AREAS

Atmospheric Composition Atmospheric Composition

Climate Variability and Change Climate Variability and Change

Global Water Cycle Global Water and Energy Cycle

Land-Use/Land-Cover Change Global Carbon Cycle Ecosystems Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems

Human Contributions and Responses Applied Sciences

Program Highlights for FY 2007

ESD will make significant progress in contributing to increased scientific knowledge in six high-priority CCSP research areas: aerosols and clouds, carbon cycle, glacier motions, global climate-qualityobservations, numerical model simulations of integrated global Earth system variability, and decision-support resources development for adaptive management and planning. ESD will determine the three-dimensional structure of clouds and aerosols with satellite data recently acquired from CloudSat (a joint project with Canada) and CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations, a joint project with France), which were launched on a single rocket on 28 April 2006. CALIPSO and CloudSat orbits are virtually the same as the orbits of Aura and Aqua and the French spacecraft PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Sciences coupled Observations from a Lidar). Only 8 minutes (or a distance of approximately 3,100 km on the Earth) separate the first and last satellites. This unique constellation of five satellites—known as the Afternoon- or A-Train—represents a technological breakthrough and provides for the first time near-simultaneous co-located measurements of atmospheric gases, aerosols, clouds, temperature, relative humidity, and radiative fluxes. Analyses of A-Train data will reduce the large uncertainty of the roles of clouds and aerosols in global climate change.

ESD will continue to have a leading role in understanding the global carbon cycle through the North American Carbon Program and the Ocean Carbon and Climate Change Program. ESD will contribute substantial investments in satellite and in situ observations and in developing ecosystem andbiogeochemical models to reduce scientific uncertainties of carbon sources, sinks, and fluxes within North America and the surrounding oceans, which has recently been a subject of intense scientific interest for both scientists and decisionmakers. ESD will continue developing the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite to measure for the first time global atmospheric carbon dioxide on regional scales with unprecedented accuracy to determine sources and sinks. OCO is scheduled for launch in 2008, when it will join the A-Train.

The Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) is measuring for the first time ice-sheet massbalance in Greenland and Antarctica, an important quantity in understanding global sea-level rise, which TOPEX and Jason data indicate was about 2 mm yr-1 over the past 15 years. ESD investigators will develop the first-ever vertical profiles of glacier motion from the surface to depths of hundreds of meters using simultaneous satellite synthetic aperture radar measurements recorded at X, C, and Lfrequencies, respectively, by partner agencies in Germany, Canada, and Japan. This is a key project of the International Polar Year 2007-2008.

To accomplish the very stringent characteristics of global climate-quality data recorded from satellites, ESD state-of-the-art calibration and validation capabilities assess climate data homogeneity, usuallyduring a scientific campaign. Validation of Aqua, Aura, CloudSat, and CALIPSO data is planned forsummer 2007, when the ER-2, WB-57, and DC-8 aircraft, balloon-borne sensors, and enhanced ground-based atmospheric networks will be deployed for simultaneous correlative measurementsduring the NASA-led Tropical Composition, Cloud, and Climate Coupling (TC4) experiment. TC4 will investigate integrated Earth system processes in convective weather systems over the eastern tropical Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.

ESD will implement an advanced integrated global Earth system model through NASA’s new Project Columbia supercomputing facility which, in April 2006, was the fourth fastest in the world. The current version of the model—which will assimilate chemical and physical variables, initially in the atmosphere and then in the ocean—will, for example, simulate global carbon sources and sinks. A new emphasis on cyberinfrastructure through the NASA-led interagency Earth System Model Framework will be initiated.

Related Research

ESD—in partnership with other Federal agencies, State and local governments, academia, and
industry—explores new uses of global Earth system observations and science results to mitigate
societal problems of national importance. In FY 2007, ESD will complete the benchmark for theassimilation of Aqua, Aura, and Terra observations in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warning system for airborne particles in Atlanta.