Global Environmental Change Research Pathways for the Next Decade (1999) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction and Background
1 Introduction and Background
Pages 1-18
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From page 1... ...
For all these reasons it is essential that the USGCRP continue to receive strong financial support and continue to provide continuing strong scientific leadership. To be effective the USGCRP must be based on a sound scientific strategy, focused on key unanswered scientific questions, using a correspondingly balanced strategy for supporting observational, data management, and analysis activities.
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In 1990, Congress established the USGCRP to carry out an organized, coherent attack on the scientific issues posed by global environmental change. The USGCRP had its principal roots in the 1980s, as both scientists and the public became increasingly aware of the links among human activities, current and future states of the global environment, and human welfare.
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perspective, were laid out in a sequence of NRC reports.5 Most recently, human components in global environmental change have been given wider recognition in the creation of the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change. The goal of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP)
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From page 4... ...
Scientific Roots of Global Climate Research The intellectual crucible in which the USGCRP was formed, however, was itself forged far earlier. The possibility of global changes in the biological, physical, and chemical environment had been recognized in the nineteenth century and became a widely accepted idea by the beginning of the twentieth century.
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Still other studies addressed a widening range of potential global change impacts and their policy implications.15 In 1979 and 1989 major World Climate Conferences16 were convened by the World Meteorological Organization and other international bodies. International meetings17 converged on the conclusion that the implications of changing climate should be assessed for development policy.
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Paul Crutzen had previously shown the importance of nitrogen oxide catalytic chain reactions in controlling the amounts of stratospheric ozone.
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Within a few short years a comprehensive framework for controlling worldwide emissions had been put in place in the form of the justly admired Montreal Protocol.23 A number of lessons relevant to the broader field of global change research may be drawn from the case of research on Antarctic ozone depletion. The severity of the ozone phenomenon demonstrates that environmental changes are not always incremental or slight.
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In this report the CGCR has sought to define a framework for this endeavor, identifying a set of coherent domains of research that are likely to provide efficient and productive progress for science and to encompass the range of scientific and social issues implicit in global environmental change. This framework builds on the initial set of guiding principles defined by the committee in its La Jolla report and on the issues of great scientific and practical importance in mature areas of Earth system science that are identified in this report.
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The discussion of each of the six primary topical areas is structured in terms of Research Imperatives -- central issues posed to the corresponding scientific community by the challenge of global environmental change. Four to six Research Imperatives are identified for each topical area.
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The central purposes of the USGCRP areas are as follows: • to observe and document changes in the Earth system; • to understand why these changes are occurring; • to improve predictions of future global changes; • to analyze the environmental, socioeconomic, and health consequences of global change; and • to support state-of-the-science assessments of global environmental change issues.26
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From page 11... ...
Progress has been made in understanding the loss of stratospheric ozone, and amendments and adjustments to the Montreal Protocol have benefited from research flowing from the USGCRP. Ice cores have provided evidence of past changes in the Earth's environment, and human-induced environmental changes have been documented.
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From page 12... ...
The fact that a principal componentd of the nation's global ocean-carbon cycle research program fell victim to budget reductions during 1996 to 1997 at DOE and required a last-ditch ad hoc rescue by NOAA is a clear statement of programmatic failure, not programmatic success. The tradeoffs between carbon sources and sinks were considered issues of immense economic significance in the recent Kyoto climate negotiations.
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From page 13... ...
It can be argued that the large investment required to develop and deploy the space observation component of the USGCRP has comprised perhaps too large a fraction of the program's "focused" budget. Nevertheless, the space missions designed to facilitate global change research, such as sea surface altimetry and scatterometry and the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, have been great successes.
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From page 14... ...
. Need to Maintain Critical Observations During the past 10 years, the value of critical combinations of models and observations has been repeatedly demonstrated in providing the nation and the world with critical information about specific issues of global environmental change.
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Other examples of problems are beginning to arise as research programs dependent on global observations of ocean, land surface, and atmospheric properties are concluding their intensive field campaigns. No provision is in place to make the necessary commitments for systematic acquisition of operational climate and global change in situ data to continue the key time series started by these programs.
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From page 16... ...
For example, precise measurements of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have yielded valuable information about the annual cycle of the biosphere and the distribution of carbon dioxide sources and sinks. Precise measurements of CFCs have also enabled the tracing of atmospheric and oceanic circulations and improved our understanding of stratospheric ozone loss.
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1983. The Global Atmospheric Research Program: 1979-1982.
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Global Change Research Program and NASA's Mission to Planet Earth/Earth Observing System (La Jolla report)
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