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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2012
Contact: Fabien Laurier | 202 419-3481 | flaurier@usgcrp.gov
Administration Releases 10-Year Global Change Strategic Plan
The Obama Administration today released a 10-year strategic plan for research related to global change, identifying priorities that will help state and local governments, businesses, and communities prepare for anticipated changes in the global environment, including climate change, in the decades ahead.
The Plan—released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which for more than 20 years has coordinated Federal global change research— was developed collaboratively by more than 100 Federal scientists. It reflects extensive inputs from stakeholders and the general public, as well as a detailed review by the National Research Council, chartered by Congress to provide independent expert advice to the Nation. The Plan will be implemented through the USGCRP and the 13 Federal departments and agencies it represents.
“Human actions are altering the atmosphere, the land, and our oceans, placing new pressures on the Earth’s ecosystems and threatening the health and economic welfare of our Nation and the world,” said Tom Armstrong, Executive Director of the USGCRP. “High-quality and well-coordinated research is essential if we are to better understand and predict future changes, develop strategies to minimize our vulnerabilities, and adapt to changes that can’t be avoided.”
Federal research under the USGCRP has for two decades focused largely on detailed documentation of specific environmental changes by satellite and other Earth-observing technologies and the development of sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s climate system to predict how such changes will manifest in the near-term. In the ten years going forward that emphasis will expand to incorporate the complex dynamics of ecosystems and human social-economic activities and how those factors influence global change. By including these added dimensions, USGCRP-sponsored research will generate information of unprecedented practical use to decision-makers in a wide range of sectors including agriculture, municipal planning, and public works.
“It is no longer enough to study the isolated physical, chemical, and biological factors affecting global change,” Armstrong said. “Advanced computing technologies and methods now allow us to integrate insights from those disciplines and add important information from the ecological, social, and economic sciences. This new capacity will deepen our understanding of global change processes and help planners in realms as diverse as storm water management, agriculture, and natural resources management.”
The Strategic Plan describes four key goals for the USGCRP during 2012 – 2021:
- Advance Science: Advance scientific knowledge of the integrated natural and human components of the Earth system, drawing upon physical, chemical, biological, ecological, and behavioral sciences.
- Inform Decisions: Provide the scientific basis to inform and enable timely decisions on adaptation to and mitigation of global change.
- Conduct Sustained Assessments: Build a sustained assessment capacity that improves the Nation’s ability to understand, anticipate, and respond to global change impacts and vulnerabilities.
- Communicate and Educate: Broaden public understanding of global change and support the development of a scientific workforce skilled in Earth-system sciences.
Work towards these goals will help the USGCRP fulfill its Congressional mandate to “assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change,” as called for in the Global Change Research Act of 1990. To achieve these goals, USGCRP is developing an implementation strategy that will draw in part upon its expertise in conducting National Climate Assessments—broad assessments of global change impacts across U.S. economic sectors, the latest of which is currently under development.
In combination with USGCRP’s expanding communication and education activities, the new scientific findings and decision-support tools expected to emerge from the Strategic Plan will empower a broad range of stakeholders to make more informed and effective decisions as they prepare for and respond to the many dimensions of global change.
To learn more about USGCRP please visit: http://library.globalchange.gov/us-global-change-research-program-factsheet
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The US Global Change Research Program (globalchange.gov) is currently advertising for two exciting positions at the National Coordination Office in Washington, DC.
Program Specialist III
As a member of the leadership team of the USGCRP NCO, serves as the NCO’s Staff Specialist for the National Climate Assessment. In consultation with the NCO Director and the Assessment Director (both senior officials at OSTP), the Program Specialist III manages planning and implementation of the NCA development process. He/she also works to maximize the integration of NCA activities in the broader USGCRP strategic framework. Reports to the NCO Director/Deputy Director.
Applications due by Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Apply here.
NCA Chief of Staff/Strategic Partnership Manager
As a senior member of the leadership team of the USGCRP NCO, serves as the NCO’s Chief of Staff for the National Climate Assessment. In consultation with the NCO Director and the Assessment Director (both senior officials at OSTP), the Chief of Staff manages planning and implementation of the NCA development process and directs the NCA staff. He/she also works to maximize the integration of NCA activities in the broader USGCRP strategic framework. Reports to the NCO Director/Deputy Director.
Applications due by Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Apply here.
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Posted by Becky Fried
Last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released temperature data showing that, in the contiguous United States, March 2012 was warmer than any other March on record. In fact, last month broke 15,272 high-temperature records and averaged fully 8.6º F warmer than the 20th-century average for March in the United States. The data also show that the year’s full first quarter—January, February, and March—was also the warmest ever recorded.
This year’s oddball winter has left many Americans wondering to what extent the anomalous heat, premature blooms, and early onslaught of allergy-provoking pollen across much of the United States can be attributed to human-caused climate change.
Record and near-record breaking temperatures dominated the eastern two-thirds of the nation and contributed to the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States, a record that dates back to 1895. Source: NOAA
No individual weather pattern—not even one lasting three-months—can be definitively attributed to human-induced climate change, or any other single cause. But scientists have known for some time that the likelihood of unusually warm seasons is increasing as a result of emissions of heat-trapping gases generated by human activities.
According to a study published in the journal Climatic Change Letters, high summer-season temperatures that used to occur in the United States only 5% of the time (i.e. one year in 20) are now occurring at least 30% of the time throughout the lower 48 states.
While the weather may have been pleasant, warmer than usual winter and spring temperatures create real problems. Earlier melting of mountain snow, for example, increases water scarcity in the western United States and makes the wildfire season longer and more severe. Studies have already shown that recent dramatic increases in wildfire area burned in the West are closely linked to climate change.
We also know that extreme temperatures will become more and more frequent as the climate continues to change. The UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in a recent report that there is a greater than 99% chance that extreme temperatures will become more frequent. The Climatic Change Letters study projects, for example, that by the middle of this century, summer-season temperatures that used to occur only 5% of the time and now occur at least 30% of the time will occur at least 70% of time across the United States.
The average global temperature for March 2012 made it the coolest March since 1999,
yet the 16th warmest since record keeping began in 1880. Source: NOAAThe warm temperatures experienced this March are clearly consistent with what’s expected from climate change. But we can’t say definitively that this March’s heat happened because of climate change any more than we can say a person’s lung cancer developed because of his or her smoking habit. There’s always a chance, however small, that the individual would have developed lung cancer anyway.
And indeed, weather patterns are sure to vary around the world, even as long-term warming trends continue. Just yesterday, NOAA released global temperature data showing that March 2012—while the warmest March on record nationally—was only the 16th warmest March on record globally. Still, that’s the 16th warmest March out of the past 132 Marches with reliably recorded temperatures.
Fortunately, understanding and responding to climate change does not require nailing down the cause of every unusual weather event. Simply knowing that climate change significantly increases the risk of extreme events is enough to justify action today.
The heat of March 2012 is an important teachable moment for Americans—not because it was definitely caused by climate change, but because it reminds us that climate change is happening now, that it’s having tangible impacts, and that we, as a Nation, would be wise to respond.
To read the full National State of the Climate report for March 2012, please visit: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/3
To read the full Global State of the Climate Report for March 2012, please visit: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/3
Becky Fried is a Policy Analyst at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy ![]() ![]() |
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The US Global Change Research Program (globalchange.gov) is currently advertising for a student assistant position at the National Coordination Office in Washington, DC.
Internship Opportunity in Climate Change and Health
The US Global Change Research Program is looking for a student intern to assist with interagency efforts focusing on climate change and human health. The intern will be based in Washington, DC, providing ample opportunity to gain knowledge in federal policies and interagency cooperation. This position provides an excellent opportunity to learn about federal and international climate change activities and research, specifically those related to the climate-health nexus.
Interns must be enrolled in an accredited college or university, with college level coursework in relevant disciplines such as environmental or earth sciences, health sciences or public health, and/or communications.
Applications due by Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Apply here. |
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The US Global Change Research Program (globalchange.gov) is currently advertising for two student assistant positions at the National Coordination Office in Washington, DC.
GCIS Student Assistant III
New, Student Internship (up to 20 hours/wk during school or up to 40hours/wk during summer; dependent upon workload). Based in Washington, DC.
Under minimal NCO staff guidance, the assistant will perform the following tasks:
- Examines various components of the global change program, performing background research to identify existing and emerging datasets, papers, projects, people, etc., and assists in planning for the integration of said components into the GCIS from a content organizational perspective.
- Discovers and transforms available metadata and augments with additional metadata as needed for adequate integration into the GCIS. This may involve automated work applying or augmenting tools and also manual text editing to match the existing format of that information to the necessary format.
- Identifies key concepts and topics of the relevant components and tags appropriate concepts and relationships between entities and integrate those components into the GCIS. This may involve web-based research, browsing research papers and/or communicating directly on behalf of the GCIS project with authors, program managers and agency data center personnel.
- Assists with additional duties as needed.
Applications due by Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Apply Here
Programming Student Assistant III
New, Student Internship (up to 20 hours/wk during school or up to 40hours/wk during summer; dependent upon workload). Based in Washington, DC.
Under minimal NCO staff guidance, the assistant will perform the following tasks:
- Examines various components of the global change program, including identifying relevant datasets, papers, projects, people, etc. and assisting in planning their integration into the GCIS from a relational and programming perspective.
- Assists with harmonization of data models and metadata representations of those components, their relationships and their provenance for integration into the GCIS.
- Develops tools, including designing, developing, implementing and debugging software systems, to transform and integrate existing information about those components into the GCIS.
- Develops prototype web-based presentation and visualization of global change data and other information.
- Assists with additional duties as needed.
Applications due by Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Apply Here
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