Interagency Research Subcommittees

At the federal level, climate change and, even more generally, global environmental change and sustainability are topics that have ties to many agencies across the U.S. government. To ensure coordination, the U.S. Congress passed the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-606). This law provides for the interagency coordination of global change activities, including research on how the climate is likely to change and on the potential consequences for the environment and society. Responsibility is assigned to the Executive Office of the President and is implemented under the guidance of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). To implement this coordination, OSTP has established several interagency subcommittees. [One of these, the Subcommittee on Global Change Research has overseen the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) (see note)]. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) provides a framework for coordination of research to reduce uncertainties about climate change and potential impacts on climate, ecosystems, natural resources, and society (see Chapter 8). A number of the activities of the other subcommittees are also related to the issues of vulnerability and adaptation to global climate change:

• Natural Disaster Reduction -- This subcommittee promotes interagency efforts to assemble and analyze data and information about the occurrence and vulnerability of the United States to a wide range of weather- and climate-related events. Through its participating agencies, the subcommittee is also promoting efforts by communities, universities, and others to increase their preparation for, and resilience to, natural disasters. In that climate change may alter the intensity, frequency, duration and location of such disasters, enhancing resilience and flexibility will assist in coping with climate change.

• Air Quality -- This subcommittee promotes interagency efforts to document and investigate the factors affecting air quality on scales from regional and subcontinental to intercontinental and global, focusing particularly on tropospheric ozone and particulate matter, both of which contribute to climate change as well as being affected by it.

• Ecological Systems -- This subcommittee promotes interagency efforts to assemble information about ecological systems and services and their coupling to society and environmental change. It is sponsoring assessments that document the current state of the nation's ecosystems, and that provide scenarios of future conditions under various management and policy options, providing a baseline for the National Assessment studies concerning how ecosystems are likely to change over the long term.