The federal government's climate research program excels at documenting temperature trends and related environmental changes but scores low when it comes to relating the importance of those findings to policymakers and the public, a new report shows. Those are among the conclusions from a 15-member National Research Council panel—including University of Michigan researcher Maria Carmen Lemos—that evaluated the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). The program spends $1.7 billion annually on climate change research. The committee's findings are contained in a report issued Sept. 13.

As the world warms in the coming decades in response to the ongoing buildup of heat-trapping gases, wide-ranging effects across the United States could include more intense storms, including hurricanes, more severe droughts and heat waves, more coastal flooding and erosion, and the spread of some insect-borne diseases, researchers say. Climate change could seriously impact U.S. agriculture, as well as water availability in Western states. "We need to be producing knowledge that will allow us to make better-informed decisions about adaptation and mitigation, and that's one of the areas that we thought was lacking" in the program., said Lemos, an associate professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment. "That part of the program is doing poorly," said Lemos, whose work focuses on the effects of climate change on people. "We don't know enough about climate-change impacts on social systems, for example." Part of the problem is a shortage of federal funding for social-science research related to climate change, Lemos said. Social scientists receive $25 million to $30 million from CCSP annually—less than 2 percent of the program's total budget. "There is a tremendous imbalance," she said. "It's not a matter of taking it from the natural sciences and dumping it into the social sciences. But I don't think anyone on the committee would disagree with me when I say that we need more resources." To help people confront climate change at the local level, the federal research program needs to do a better job at engaging state and local officials, nongovernmental organizations and industry, the committee concluded. The committee will hold a workshop Oct. 15 in Washington, D.C., to discuss future priorities for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.

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Jim Erickson Email: ericksn@umich.edu Phone: (734)647-1842