In the course of our work at CDIAC, books and announcements that are highly specialized and may not get a broad announcement to the worldwide scientific community cross our desks, so we'd like to mention them here. CDIAC does not stock or distribute these publications.
Our Changing Planet: The Fiscal Year 2000 U.S. Global Change Research Program (Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, National Science and Technology Council, Washington, D.C., 1999, 100 pp.).
The 2000 version of this annual report explains the major transition about to take place for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The program will continue its research into improving our understanding of the changing Earth environment. A new focus is intended to advance our knowledge of how such change will affect society. And a global environmental change information service will facilitate the application of research results to national needs.
The USGCRP is guided by five broad objectives: determine the origins, rates, and likely future course of natural and anthropogenic changes; increase understanding of the combined effects of multiple stresses on ecosystems; understand and model global environmental change and its processes on finer spatial scales and across a wide range of time scales; address the potential for surprises and abrupt changes in the global environment; and understand and assess the impacts of global environmental change and their consequences for the United States.
To meet these objectives, the USGCRP includes five Program Elements: Understanding the Earth's Climate System; Biology and Biogeochemistry of Ecosystems; Composition and Chemistry of the Atmosphere; Paleoenvironment and Paleoclimate; Human Dimensions of Global Change; and the Global Water Cycle. The USGCRP is establishing a Carbon Cycle Science Initiative to give increased emphasis to that area.
The report summarizes key USGCRP accomplishments in 1998, such as continued progress in the National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change; El Niño-Southern Oscillation forecasting; assessment of ozone depletion; and fire monitoring. Of special interest to readers of CDIAC Communications, the report lists global-change research data products newly available in 1998. Finally, the report describes the global-change 1998-2000 budget and program plans for each of the ten USGCRP agencies.
Copies of Our Changing Planet are available online at http://gcrio.ciesin.org/ocp00/ or from the U.S. Global Change Research Information Office, P.O. Box 1000, 61 Rt. 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 (914-365-8930, fax 914-365-8922)
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