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National and International Programs

In what may very well be the first joint activity of such scope, the nations of the world have banded together to establish the Global Change Research Program (GCRP). Scientists and policy-makers around the world have been meeting for more than two decades now to establish priorities that are driving the acquisition of data that will help answer many of the questions we are facing. Through such bodies as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a list of seven major geophysical and biological phenomena has been drawn up. All signatories to the GCRP are addressing these phenomena in one way or another. These seven prioritized areas are:

Those nations that are technologically capable are working with each other to design instruments and spacecraft and to define data-gathering needs to make this large-scale examination of our planet as efficient an enterprise as possible. To that end, instruments being designed and built by one nation are often scheduled to be launched on spacecraft designed and built by another. Data policies are being established that will allow the free flow of data across international (political) and physical boundaries.

The principal players - nations and organizations - are:

The job is so large that no one group or nation can address it properly. Collaboration is an absolute requirement if we are to do the job properly.

In response to its agreement to participate in the GCRP, the executive branch of the US government established roles for several federal agencies in the USGCRP; NASA is not the only player.

Those agencies and their roles include:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): responsible for space-based Earth science observations, and studies of broad scientific scope that examine the planet as an integrated whole;

National Science Foundation (NSF): ensures that basic research is conducted in all areas of terrestrial, solid Earth, atmospheric, and oceanic sciences;

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): maintains a balanced program of observations, analytical studies, climate prediction, and information management;

Department of Energy (DOE): focuses on carbon dioxide and other emissions from energy supply and end-use systems;

US Department of Agriculture (USDA): conducts research to assess the effects of global change on the agricultural food and fiber production systems and on forests and forest ecosystems of the US and worldwide;

Department of Defense (DoD): conducts mission-related research into environmental processes and conditions that affect defense operations, tactics, and systems;

Department of the Interior (DOI): addresses the collection, maintenance, analysis, and interpretation of short and long term land, water, biological, and other natural resources information;

Department of Transportation (DOT): assesses the impact of transportation primarily through the use of fossil fuels on global change;

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): conducts research to assess, evaluate, and predict the ecological environmental and human health consequences of global change.

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Code 935, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA
Written by: Nicholas M. Short, Sr. email: nmshort@epix.net
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Updated: 1999.03.15.