TESTIMONY OF D. JAMES BAKER UNDER SECRETARY OF COMMERCE FOR OCEANS AND ATMOSPHERE AND ADMINSTRATOR, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINSTRATION BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES March 9, 2000 Introduction Thank you for this opportunity to discuss with you the Administration's FY2001 budget proposal for the US Global Change Research program (USGCRP). I know the Members of this Subcommittee, and the Science Committee as a whole, have been strong supporters of this research program, which is one of our nation's most important scientific efforts. The USGCRP began as a Presidential Initiative in 1989, and was codified by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. Every Administration and Congress has strongly backed the program since its inception. While we may have some differences of opinion on precisely how and where to invest our taxpayers' funds, we share a bipartisan understanding that the future prosperity of this country depends on strong federal support for all areas of scientific inquiry. The President and the Vice President consider global change research to be one of the foundations of a sustainable future. The Administration looks forward to working with the Congress to carry on this bipartisan tradition of support for sound science on this subject. The Budget in Brief The overall FY 2001 USGCRP Budget Request is approximately $1.74 billion dollars, about 2 percent higher than last year's enacted level. Within the total, support for scientific research is up about $53 million (7%), including a $31 million increase for carbon cycle studies at USDA as part of the carbon cycle research initiative begun last year. Surface-based observations at NOAA are receiving a substantial increase ($28 million, or about 39%) that will help provide new information on changing patterns of temperature and rainfall in the US. The total increase for surface-based observations and science together is about $79 million, or 10%. The space-based observation component of the budget is reduced by about $40 million, to a total of $897 million. This decrease is mainly a consequence of decreases in NASA development costs as the first Earth The fact that the increase in science funding more than offsets the decrease in funding for spacebased observations is important. Increasing the proportion of program funding for science has been one of the most consistent recommendations from the National Research Council and various agency advisory committees over the last few years. The National Research Council (NRC) report, Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade, noted that 65 percent of the total USGCRP were devoted to space-based observations and data systems in the 1996 budget proposal. In this year's budget proposal, the equivalent number is about 52 percent. Important highlights of the FY2001 budget proposal include: Improved Climate Observations. The FY 2001 budget provides $28 million to enhance NOAA surface-based observations, including creation of a climate reference network to provide, for the first time, simultaneous, automated, and ideally located measurements of changing temperatures, precipitation and soil moisture. Measurements of atmospheric trace gases, aerosols, ocean temperatures, and ocean currents will also be expanded. The Global Water Cycle. The FY 2001 budget provides $308 million (an increase of $35 million, or about 13%) for research on changes that appear to be occurring in the Earth's water cycle -- one of the primary determinants of the Earth's climate. The launch of NASA's EOS Aqua spacecraft in December 2000 will support this research by providing new global measurements of humidity, cloud properties, precipitation, snow, and sea ice. • Ecosystem Changes. The FY 2001 budget provides $224 million for research on the potential impacts of climate change and other stresses on forests, coastal areas, croplands, and other ecosystems (an increase of $19 million, or 9%). New studies will help identify "thresholds" for significant changes in ecosystems. Carbon Cycle Initiative. The FY 2001 budget request continues strong support for the multiagency carbon cycle science initiative begun in FY 2000, providing $229 million (an increase of $23 million or 11%) to study how carbon cycles between the atmosphere, the oceans, and land, and the role of farms, forests, and other natural or managed lands in capturing carbon. Key agencies include USDA, DOE, NASA, NSF, DOI, and the Smithsonian Institution. A Record of Accomplishment Global change is an extremely complex scientific topic. Explaining how the Earth system functions, how it is changing, and how it is likely to change under increasing human interventions in the future requires a coordinated research effort that cuts across many different scientific disciplines. The success of the USGCRP in marshalling such an effort, combined with strong support from Congress and the Administration for global change research, has led to a remarkable increase in our understanding. Over the past decade, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has achieved an impressive number of scientific advances: Scientists have conducted an intensive study of ozone depletion, including monitoring the spatial extent and temporal behavior of the Antarctic ozone hole. Observations have demonstrated an ongoing and statistically significant decline in ozone amounts over most of the Earth, much of which is attributable to changes in atmospheric chemistry associated with human activities. · Our understanding of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been greatly improved. We now know that this phenomenon, as well as its effect on climate around the world, has a degree of predictability. Observations and analyses have demonstrated that emissions of carbon dioxide and other trace effluents of human society are changing the composition of the atmosphere. It is projected that over the next century the abundance of some greenhouse gases will increase to levels not seen in millions of years. There is now a near unanimous consensus that the surface of the Earth is indeed warming. There is also general agreement that emission of greenhouse gases by society is responsible for at least part of this temperature increase. Substantial improvements in climate models have been made over the last decade. Refining spatial resolution, improving representations of land surface processes, and taking the initial steps to include the climatic effects of aerosols and ozone depletion have resulted in model simulations that more closely match the observed temperature record over the last century. Along with the ability to carry out ensembles of simulations, these improvements are lending greater credibility to projections of change in climate over the next century The ongoing observations from the Landsat satellite series (recently extended by the successful launch of Landsat-7) have provided an accurate record of changes in land cover and land use, permitting quantitative assessments of deforestation rates in tropical areas. Over the next several years, in addition to continuing to improve our understanding of the Earth's environment and how it is changing, we expect the program will greatly advance our knowledge about the implications of such change for society through the conduct of periodic assessments as called for under the Global Change Research Act. Organization of the U.S. Global Change Research Program The agencies who participate in the USGCRP are USDA, DOC/NOAA, DOE, HHS, DOI, DOT, EPA, NASA, NSF, and the Smithsonian Institution. During the last year, the USGCRP has been refining its research priorities as it engages in the process of developing a new, long-term research strategy for the next decade. The NRC Pathways report, which the USGCRP commissioned, has influenced the definition of the nearterm research challenges and is also serving as important input for the long-term strategy. The USGCRP is organized as a series of closely linked program elements that are directly responsive to the scientific challenges described in the Pathways report: • Understanding the Earth's Climate System, with a focus on improving our understanding of the climate system as a whole, rather than its individual components, and thus improving our ability to predict climate change and variability. Biology and Biogeochemistry of Ecosystems, with a focus on improving understanding of the relationship between a changing biosphere and a changing climate and the impacts of global change on managed and natural ecosystems. • Composition and Chemistry of the Atmosphere, with a focus on improving our understanding of the impacts of natural and human processes on the chemical composition of the atmosphere at global and regional scales, and determining the effect of such changes on air quality and human health. Paleoenvironment and Paleoclimate, with a focus on providing a quantitative understanding of the patterns of natural environmental variability, on timescales from centuries to millennia, upon which the effects of human activities on the planet's biosphere, geosphere, and atmosphere are superimposed. Human Dimensions of Global Change, with a focus on explaining how humans affect the Earth system and are affected by it, and on investigating the potential response strategies for global change The Global Water Cycle, with a focus on improving our understanding of how water moves through the land, atmosphere, and ocean, and how global change may increase or decrease regional water availability Carbon Cycle Science, with a focus on improving our understanding of how carbon moves through the Earth's terrestrial ecosystems, soils, ocean, and atmosphere. Before turning to a more detailed description of recent accomplishments and FY2001 plans in most of these areas, I would like to highlight a few items of special priority. The Carbon Cycle Initiative We are continuing to increase our emphasis on Carbon Cycle Science in FY2001. We need to improve our understanding of how carbon moves through the Earth's atmosphere, land, and water, the sources and sinks of carbon on continental and regional scales, and how such sinks may change or be enhanced. This was among the strongest recommendations of the Pathways report. The USGCRP, through interactions with the scientific community and active program managers, established a Carbon Cycle Science Initiative in the FY 2000 budget. The Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Interior, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Smithsonian Institution will all play important roles in this effort, guided by a science plan that has been drafted with participation by many of the leading scientists in this field. The Carbon Cycle Science Initiative will employ a wide variety of research activities in a comprehensive examination of the carbon cycle as an integrated system, with an initial emphasis on North America. Comparison of North America to other regions will also be important for understanding the relative importance of our region in the global context. Atmospheric and oceanographic sampling field campaigns over the continent and adjacent ocean basins will be combined with atmospheric transport models to develop more robust estimates of the continental and subcontinental-scale magnitude and location of the North American carbon sink. Local-scale experiments conducted in various regions will begin to identify the mechanisms involved in the operation of carbon sinks on land, the quantities of carbon assimilated by ecosystems, and how quantities might change or be enhanced in the future. The initiative will also include evaluation of information from past and current land-use changes, both from remotely sensed and historical records, to assess how human activity has affected carbon storage on land. Agency and academic researchers will study potential management strategies for maximizing carbon storage, including evaluation of the variability, sustainability, lifetime, and related uncertainties of different managed sequestration approaches. Finally, enhanced long-term monitoring of the atmosphere, ocean, forests, agricultural lands, and range lands, using improved inventory techniques and new remote sensing, will be used to determine long-term changes in carbon stocks. Integration of new observations and understanding of carbon cycle processes in regional and global carbon system models will enable us to more accurately project future atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The recent impressive scientific progress in carbon cycle research shows that this area is ready for investment and progress: Scientists have extended the climate and trace-gas record back to 400,000 years before the present through studies of Antarctic ice cores. This record shows that the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere over the last century has resulted in higher atmospheric concentrations than previously seen during this entire period of time. Investigators have pioneered the use of high-precision measurements of the O2/N2 ratio in air to study the biogeochemical cycles of carbon and oxygen. The combination of atmospheric O/N2 and CO2 provides a powerful tool to study the fate of fossil fuel CO2 because it allows discrimination between uptake via inorganic dissolution in the oceans (which does not release oxygen) and photosynthesis (which does release oxygen). The record to date has revealed significant interannual variability in the magnitude of the terrestrial biospheric sink for CO2. The anomalous absence of net sequestration of atmospheric carbon by the terrestrial biosphere in 1998 may be due to the 1997-1998 El Niño event. The ability to monitor these fluxes in real time will be a critical asset in developing the capability for managing a national or global |