A Review of the U.S. Global Change Research Program's Draft Strategic Plan (2012) / Chapter Skim
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2 Conveying the Importance and Value of Global Change Research
2 Conveying the Importance and Value of Global Change Research
Pages 6-7
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From page 6... ...
Some examples may include: improving the accuracy and lead times of seasonal climate forecasts, quantifying the residence times of ozone depleting and greenhouse gases, establishing that clouds and aerosols are the largest sources of uncertainty in modeling the response of the climate system to increasing greenhouse gases, and developing more realistic descriptions of their roles at the process level, developing coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models that have successfully simulated the global temperature record for the 20th century, demonstrating that changes in global mean temperatures over the past two centuries cannot be explained without anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing, establishing measurement methods and carrying out the first measurements of global tropical deforestation, conducting the first experimental field tests of plant and entire ecosystem responses to enhanced concentrations of atmospheric CO2, carrying out national assessments of climate change and its impacts, developing emissions scenarios and climate projections for the 21st century, for use in international climate model intercomparison studies and in the IPCC assessment reports. Numerous additional examples of the successes of global change research can be found in previous NRC reports (e.g., ACC Advancing the Science)
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From page 7... ...
The countless decisions that are being made – related to infrastructure, natural resource use, water management, agriculture, zoning, and development of our nation's energy system – could easily account for trillions, rather than billions, of dollars in investment in the coming decades. These decisions have the potential to be made more effectively with better knowledge and foresight about future global change, about ways to reduce the inherent vulnerabilities of these systems, and about the ways in which adaptation or mitigation efforts could affect these systems.
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