Greater Federal Research Needed to Combat Climate Change

by Climate Weekly – March 17, 2009

To properly address the effects of climate change, federal agencies, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), should develop close ties to the scientists who research climate-change information and the practitioners who use that data, including state and federal policymakers. That's a key finding of a new report by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies.

The report states that many state and local officials base important decisions on how to build bridges and manage their water supplies on the assumption that current climate conditions will continue. This assumption is no longer valid, the NRC said. That's where partnerships between the NOAA, the EPA, scientists, and lawmakers come in.

The committee that authored the report made six recommendations that the NRC says the agencies responsible for apprising decision makers about the effects of climate change should follow. Among the suggestions: "[A]genc[y] efforts should be driven by the needs of end users in the field, not by scientific research priorities," the NRC stated in a recent release. Also, they concluded that more federal research is necessary so state and regional decision makers have the information they need to properly address climate change. Any federal studies should also address the best ways to collect and disseminate information to those decision makers, the NRC explained.