sluggish. They will be slow to warm up. They would be very slow to warm off-to cool down.

So I have commented on observations. I have commented on updated diagnostics. I have commented on new projections. The assessment done by the scientists in the IPCC is to provide an improved statement that would be a scientific input to this complex social, economic, technical equity issue that we know as global change. If I have glossed over any points in trying to meet the time schedule, please do and I would be happy to entertain questions. Please ask them. Thank you very much for your interest in the update.

Chairman BOEHLERT. We are going to pause.

STATEMENT OF DR. BERRIEN MOORE, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF EARTH, OCEANS, AND SPACE, UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

Dr. MOORE. Is this better? I am going to take as given that the increases of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose today, and will continue to pose in the future, serious scientific and policy issues. Given that, I then ask what are the key scientific challenges before us? What steps do we need to take with respect to our scientific agenda?

First, I think we must arrest the decline of the observational network throughout the world. This decline is acute in regions like Africa, Russia, and parts of South America, but it is not restricted to those regions.

Second, we must sustain and expand the observational foundation for climate studies. We must seek to obtain climate-relevant data. This means long-term commitments to observations. For instance, the monitoring of carbon dioxide, both in situ and, perhaps, from space, the in situ monitoring of the world's oceans.

Third, we must understand mechanisms and factors that lead to changes in the radiative forcing of the atmosphere. We must be able to turn emissions into concentrations in a more accurate fashion. This ties back to observations. What are the observations that we need to better tie emissions to concentrations?

Fourth, we must understand and characterize better the unresolved physical and biological and chemical processes. For instance, the role of clouds. This has been challenging to us for a decade and longer. It remains challenging. What will the role of clouds be in a future earth? Arctic Sea Ice we see a thinning of the summertime Arctic Sea Ice. Can we explain that phenomena? Is it part of natural variability or is it a part of an anthropogenically changed climate? What is the macrocirculation of the ocean and how might it change?

Fifth, we must address more completely long-term climate variability. We are attempting to see a signal and the noise is climate variability. And, therefore, we must understand climate variability better. But there is also a benefit. By simply understanding the variability of climate, we will be better posed to address not only climate change, but the natural challenges that climate faces us with.

Sixth, we must explore in our calculations directly the probabilistic nature of climate. Climate system is complex. It is some

what chaotic. It has unresolved features. The only way that we begin to actually build confidence in our projections is to have done many of them. We need to understand the statistical character of climate.

And that poses the next problem. We must expand significantly the available computing resources to attack this problem. The lack of available computing resources hinders the scientific effort, and that is particularly true in the United States.

Eight, we must improve the connection between regional climate and the global studies. Humans are affected at regional scales, not at the global scale.

Finally, the last two. We must link better the physical, biological, chemical system with the human system. We are, after all, talking about ourselves.

And, finally, climate variability and climate change-this is truly an international issue, and, therefore, we need to strengthen the international scientific agenda as we go forward. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman.

Chairman BOEHLERT. And now, the third panelist in our only Panel for the day of distinguished witnesses, Dr. Kennel.

STATEMENT OF DR. CHARLES KENNEL, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH, NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL

Dr. KENNEL. I have-there we are. Thank you very much, Mr. Boehlert. It is a pleasure to be here. I would like to concentrate my testimony on the results of the recent report that the Committee on Global Change Research generated. And it focuses on how to organize the research agenda that was just outlined by Dr. Moore. So we are going to talk about some of the organizational issues.

Before I do that, I would like to leave you with a few rather general points from that report. Climate scientists have to study the world at a global scale. They have to study the ice, the oceans, the atmosphere, the land, the living things on the land, in order to understand what will happen with a global climate. But it is absolutely essential to embark upon a program in which we increasingly focus on regions, first, at the continental scale and—as for the El Niño, and then at the national scale; finally, on the regional scale, so that we can finally get down to helping answer what is the most important question in all of environmental science. What does it all mean to me?

Next viewgraph, please. Now, climate scientists talk about abstract things, like the global average temperature having increased by 4 to 8 degrees centigrade. And that is a wonderful concept. It helps us understand the system, but it doesn't really help people understand the implications. One of the things that they are concerned with, for example, will there be an increase in the number and severity of severe weather events?

We would like very much to be able to better predict these. But in order to predict these, in addition to the information and understanding that comes from global climate studies, we need to fold in understanding about what is happening on the ground, what is happening with the human systems, what the rivers are like, what

has happened with forest management practices, and so on, and so forth.

And so in order to make global change research meaningful, we now need to embark upon a program of regionalizing it, of extracting its meaning for every region and every sector of the economy. In certain areas-next viewgraph, please we have actually embarked upon a program of doing this. One of the key accomplishments of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, over the last ten or so years, has been an increasing ability to forecast the climate 6 to 9 months ahead. Now, this is a so-called El Niño forecast, and it is already getting sufficiently good to attract the attention of the agricultural commodities market.

And so now we are beginning to understand when and where there will be increased rainfall in the United States as a result of conditions in the far distant western Pacific. And right now, one of the frontiers of this subject-there are scientists in California and New York translating these predictions for rainfall into actual predictions for what will happen in the watersheds of California and other major basins around the world. Now, and that will help electricity managers, for example, in California, understand what next year's stream flow may be.

Now, of course, the investment decisions that they need to make on infrastructure take place over-they have to think in the 10-, 20-, 30-year time scale, which is the same time scale on which we expect things like global warming and longer climatic cycles, things with arcane names, like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and so on. We expect these longer climate cycles to interact with the accumulation of greenhouse gases to produce the climate 10, 20, 30 years ahead. Can we make useful predictions that will be useful for decision-making on that scale, and should people pay attention to them? That is the question.

One of the things that we have learned from our experience with studying the global climate and also the El Niño, has been that we now understand next viewgraph-that we need to take a system approach to the development of understanding of climate in general. We need to start, as Dr. Moore emphasized, with global and regional observing networks. They need to be placed into context by large scale computer modeling and simulation. When that context is completed, then we need to understand the impact of these predictions on the regions and on the sectors of the economy. And we need to assess those impacts very carefully, both for their scientific uncertainty and for understanding who it will be that will be affected.

And, finally, the goal should be-in developing environmental information systems, the goal should be to develop an end-to-end system that can improve decision-making in the environmental area. We believe that much of our experience is drawn from the climate area, but we believe that systems like this pertain throughout the region, throughout the environmental enterprise.

And a final point I would like to make is that the same system that helps extract economic value from environmental information is also the one that creates a platform on which good policy can be made. They are related.

Now, what is it that needs to be done to accomplish this creation to create an end-to-end system like this? Next viewgraph. Our committee has concluded that a new management philosophy is needed, a national framework that will sustain and integrate the webs of observing systems that we need, that will attend to expanding computation and modeling capacity and apply it to the problems of interest, and would initiate the regionally focused environmental research and assessment, and finally to create the partnerships, the working-true working relationships, not only between the physical and the social scientists, but also the public and private decision-makers and the scientists, and connect them up nationally and regionally.

So that is obviously a very long-term program. What is the first step? Our committee recommended-next viewgraph and final-our committee recommended establishing a high-level governmental authority. We are not the architects of government, but we suggested that you create one. And that its essential characteristic be that there are resources—a line item with resources accountable to OMB and to you for the interagency and the national and regional coordination that is required to start building an end-to-end decision-support system.

Chairman BOEHLERT. Thank you very-excuse me thank you very much. And I am not surprised, with the credentials and background and expertise of our three panelists, that you touched on a number of areas, and your more detailed statement, which is part of the permanent record, is even more comprehensive. But we need help.

And I would ask that each of you try to identify the three things, with some specificity, that we need to do first. I mean, you know, new management policy. I think we can say there is so many areas of government that need a new management policy. National framework for action, well, that is something we can all subscribe to. And creation of partnerships are so very valuable, but can we get to some specifics?

And let me ask, starting with Dr. Albritton, the three panelists to respond to that question. Something—and try, as much as possible I know this is the august Science Committee, but in plain English, if you can guide us. What are the three things you would recommend that we consider doing to fill the information and knowledge gap so that all of us, no matter how we perceive the issue, will have a better base upon which to continue our observations?

Dr. ALBRITTON. Thank you. Could I phrase that as what are my three wishes? And I will do this in the terms of research and science and I will do it—I will present my three dreams in the context of, perhaps, in a few future years, having a better understanding of how the planet works so that that information can be brought to groups like this that would help this complex decision associated with global change.

My first dream or my first wish would be to better understand two aspects of climate forcing, that is, things that cause climate to change that relate to us. The first one is to understand how carbon storage works so that we look not only at CO2 as a gas in the atmosphere, but in its full manifest cycle through the planet. And the

second part of that first wish is a better understanding of the shorter-lived greenhouse gases that we already are focusing and considering for regional pollution. These are things like smog, ozone. They are fine particles in aerosols. And I suspect that if we have better information on those, we will find that we may be getting bigger bang for the buck in multiple issues, as opposed to one issue.

The second dream I would have is better understanding of waterrelated processes in the atmosphere. That is, water vapor, clouds, precipitation, because it is those that relate to the extremes of the climate system.

The third wish would be to be smarter on regional foci, as has been indicated. And that is, be able to come to you and say, our forecast for region "X" is such and such. And to be able to do that, it takes the information home to people who make local decisionmaking. To be specific, that relates to better computing power and, secondly, a better understanding of the multiple environmental issues in that region. For example, what impact will climate change have on struggles with air quality in that region? Those would be my three wishes.

Dr. MOORE. Well, I guess my first wish would be to have theDan Albritton's three wishes because I found myself very much in agreement with him. On the carbon storage, I am in very strong agreement, and I would just simply add, we need to understand the sources and sinks, the places carbon comes from and where it goes, and how that might change in the future.

Secondly, I would like to believe that we have the political and scientific muscle to tie weather observations to climate. That we are willing to make climate-relevant measurements with our weather-monitoring system. That poses serious questions of calibration and so forth. Things that cost money.

Thirdly, we must have the computing resources to conduct the studies that are needed. We must have the computing resources to conduct the climate simulation studies that are needed. This is particularly true when we try to analyze questions like extreme events or questions at regional scale. These are complex issues and they require significant computing power.

Chairman BOEHLERT. Dr. Kennel.

Dr. KENNEL. My committee has three wishes. Number one, build observing systems for the environment. Make them comprehensive. Sustain the ones we have got, connect the ones we have got into a more information meaningful way. In specifics, for example, for the ocean, try to assure uniform global coverage of ocean circulation, temperature, and chemistry. It is a difficult problem and we are embarking on a program called Argo that will attempt to do that. But there are serious problems, for example, with coverage in the southern hemisphere and in the Antarctic southern ocean where much of the retirement of carbon dioxide takes place in the ocean. Another one would be to start measuring, on a regionally differentiated way, how air pollution is beginning to interact with regional climate.

Second-this has been said three times-increase the computational capacity available to environmental science. And, third-this has been repeated twice-get started on regional programs that