1.1: Scientific Understanding
Improved scientific understanding of the changing climate system and its impacts Other Information:
The need to advance understanding of the climate system and climate impacts, improve climate predictions and projections,
and better inform adaptation and mitigation strategies is urgent. Key scientific uncertainties limit scientists' ability to
understand and predict changes in the climate system. This is particularly true for monthly-to-decadal timescales and at the
regional and local levels for which scales are highly relevant to planning and decision making. Research on the connections
between weather and climate, for instance, is necessary to understand how a changing climate may affect precipitation patterns
and severe weather events, including hurricanes. On decadal-to-centennial timescales, research is needed to understand feedback
between atmospheric greenhouse gases and the rate of global-to-regional climate impacts, such as changes in sea level, heat
waves, droughts, and air and water quality. Adaptation and mitigation strategies must be informed by a solid scientific understanding
of the climate system. Research is required to understand how changes in the global ocean circulation affect the climate system
and their subsequent impacts on coastal regions, including sea level rise, ocean acidification, and living marine resources.
Improved understanding of climate change and variability requires sustaining and advancing climate observation systems and
platforms that monitor the state of the climate system. International, National, State, and local efforts to limit greenhouse
gases require reliable information to support emissions verification, as do efforts to track climate changes and mitigate
impacts. To achieve this objective, NOAA will continue its world-class observation, monitoring, research, and modeling efforts,
and increase efforts to close gaps in understanding the climate system and the role of humans within the system. This effort
will require expanding and sustaining comprehensive, global- and regional-scale climate observing and monitoring networks
that provide high-resolution information, and conducting and sponsoring fundamental physical, chemical, and biological research
to discover new approaches and opportunities to understand the climate system, along with research to explore the effects
of a changing climate on social and economic systems. NOAA will conduct and sponsor research on how climate variability and
change affect different regions, particularly those especially vulnerable to climate impacts. This will require answering
key questions that limit scientific understanding of the ocean's role in climate (such as ocean variability, ocean circulation
and heat content), atmospheric composition (clouds, aerosols, precipitation), ice sheets, global energy budget, biogeochemical
cycles, and socioeconomic parameters. NOAA must integrate this knowledge into models to improve predictive capabilities, and
increase the number and quality of climate predictions through high-performance computing and modeling advancements. Actively
engaging the external research community through competitive research programs will be vital to ensure NOAA's successful realization
of this objective. Over the next five years, evidence of progress toward this objective will include: * More comprehensive
knowledge of greenhouse gases and other climate forcing agents; * Climate observing systems are sustained and the state of
the climate system is routinely monitored; * Improved basis for confidence in understanding key oceanic, atmospheric, hydrologic,
biogeochemical, and socioeconomic components of the climate system and impacts; * Advances in climate modeling leading to
improved scientific understanding and a new generation of climate predictions and projections on global to regional scales
and from monthly to centennial time scales; * Increased confidence in assessing and anticipating climate impacts; and * Quantitative
short- to long-term outlooks and projections of Arctic sea ice.
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