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Within the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
the Office of Global Programs (OGP) has lead responsibility for the agency's
Climate and Global Change Program. The Climate and Global Change Program
represents NOAA's contribution to the on-going national and international
programs that are designed to improve our ability to observe, understand,
predict, and respond to changes in the global environment. The OGP program
builds on NOAA's mission requirements and longstanding capabilities in
global change research and prediction. NOAA has the primary responsibility
within the Federal Government to routinely provide climate forecasts and
products to the Nation. OGP assists in this capacity by sponsoring focused
scientific research, within approximately eleven research elements, all
aimed at understanding climate variability and its predictability. Through
studies in these areas, researchers coordinate activities that jointly
contribute to improved predictions and assessments of climate variability
over a continuum of time scales from season to season, year to year, and
over the course of a decade and beyond.
NOAA's Climate and Global Change Program is an integral part of the interagency
U.S. Global Change Research Program, and works to achieve an important
objective of global change--understanding the global climate system. As
part of NOAA's contribution, OGP also guides NOAA's effort in spearheading
the multinational initiative to establish an International Research Institute
and associated regional applications centers to generate and disseminate
forecast guidance. This initiative is made possible because of new scientific
advancements in predicting temperature and precipitation patterns associated
with El Nino variations, and promotes the generation and dissemination
of forecast information.
The NOAA Climate and Global Change Program is currently funding research
in the following areas:
- Aerosols - research to improve the capabilities for predicting
the role of anthropogenic aerosols in forcing climatic change.
- Atlantic Climate Change Program (ACCP) - climate variability
related to the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Atlantic tropical
sea surface temperature "dipole".
- Atmospheric Chemistry - global monitoring, process-oriented
laboratory and field studies, and theoretical modeling to improve the
predictive understanding of the concentrations and interactions of atmospheric
trace gases that influence the Earth's chemical and radiative balance.
- Climate Change Data and Detection - data and information management
support (i.e., data assembly, processing, inventory, distribution and
archiving), and documentation of the quantitative character of observed
climate variations and changes.
- Climate Dynamics and Experimental Prediction - utilizing the
climate model developed by the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
to study climate variability and change.
- Climate Observations - ocean, atmosphere, and land surface
climate observations, measurement systems and techniques.
- Economics and Human Dimensions of Climate Fluctuations - aimed
at understanding how social and economic systems are currently influenced
by fluctuations in short-term climate (seasons to years), and how human
behavior can be (or why it may not be) affected by improved predictions
of climate variations.
- Education - development and dissemination of climate and global
change information for teachers, students, and educational institutions.
- GEWEX Continental Scale International Project (GCIP)
- NOAA's contribution to the GEWEX Continental scale International Project,
emphasizing scale integration of hydrometeorological processes in climate
models and transfer of representations of these processes into climate
models either through a nested model approach or improved land surface
schemes.
- Global Ocean - Atmosphere - Land System (GOALS) - to understand
global climate variability on seasonal-to-interannual time scales; to
determine the extent to which this variability is predictable; to develop
the observational theoretical, and computational means to predict this
variability; and to foster the development of experimental predictions
within the limits of proven feasibility.
- Ocean-Atmosphere Carbon Exchange Study (OACES) - part of NOAA's
contribution to the completion of the NOAA/DOE/NSF-sponsored Global
Ocean Carbon Dioxide Survey and a continuing effort to improve our understanding
of the role of the ocean in sequestering the increasing burden of anthropogenically-derived
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
- Paleoclimatology - utilization of paleoclimate data to develop
an understanding of the seasonal to century-scale variability and predictability
of the ENSO and African/Asian monsoon systems, the ocean thermohaline
system and its relation to global change, and the hydrologic system
at regional to global scales, as it relates to the above.
OGP's participation in these areas has assisted NOAA in augmenting the
state of science in the United States, guiding the direction of NOAA's
research efforts, and providing valuable scientific data and information
for practical use and social and economic benefit.
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