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Climate Research Committee

Climate Research Committee Statement of Task

The purpose of the Climate Research Committee is to foster atmospheric, oceanic, and related research aimed at advancing knowledge and understanding of the physical basis of climate and climate change. In pursuit of its objective, the committee:

  1. Provides advice to government agencies on matters pertaining to scientific aspects of climate and climate change.
  2. Serves as the U.S. National Committee for the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) of the World Meteorological Organization and the International Council of Scientific Unions, and maintain liaison with the WCRP in developing and sustaining an international program of climate research.
  3. In research matters involving the oceans, the biosphere, or the cryosphere, maintains coordination with the relevant National Research Council entities and other groups with planning and oversight responsibilities.
  4. Takes initiatives, as required, to promote progress in climate research; in particular, organize meetings and workshops and prepare reports and planning documents.
  5. Keeps the officers of its parent organization, the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, informed of any major actions being considered including actions related to the WCRP.

Current Membership

Antonio Busalacchi, Jr. (chair), University of Maryland
Ana P. Barros, Duke University
Cecilia Bitz, University of Washington
James Coakley Jr., Oregon State University
Gabriele Hegerl, University of Edinburgh
Henry D. Jacoby, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Anthony C. Janetos, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/University of Maryland
Robert Lempert, RAND Corporation
Roger B. Lukas, University of Hawaii
Linda Mearns, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Gerald Meehl, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Joyce E. Penner, University of Michigan
Richard Richels, Electric Power Research Institute
Taro Takahashi, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Lonnie G. Thompson, Ohio State University

Biographical information

Past Meetings

March 19-20, 2008 (Workshop on CCSP Priorities)
Millennium Harvest House
Boulder, CO
CCSP Meeting Agenda
Discussion Papers from the Workshop

Friday, March 21, 2008 (CRC Meeting)
NCAR Mesa Lab
Boulder, CO
CRC Meeting Agenda

November 5-6, 2007
National Academy of Sciences Building
Washington, DC.
Meeting Agenda
The CRC serves as the U.S. National Committee for the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) of the World Meteorological Organization and the International Council of Scientific Unions. Each year, a portion of the CRC’s fall meeting is reserved to facilitate interactions between WCRP, U.S. federal agencies, and other interested parties. This years’ meeting focused on US involvement in WCRP, as well as funding, leadership, coordination, crosscuts, and WMO reorganization.

The CRC also held a forum on research challenges and strategies for better understanding and predicting extreme events in the context of a changing climate. Speakers were asked to consider a broad definition of extreme events that included not only changes in the frequency or intensity of low-probability events but also how subtle changes in the mean (or other statistics) of climatologically important variables on a variety of timescales may lead to extreme impacts. Other important topics considered were mechanisms that could lead to changes in extreme events, the extent to which changes in extreme events might be predictable, and theoretical, observational, and modeling advances needed to improve predictive capabilities.

May 16-17, 2007 The National Academy of Sciences Building
May 16: Board Room (Closed Session; CRC Members and Staff only) May 17: Auditorium (Open to the public; held jointly with BASC)
2100 C St., NW
Washington, DC 20037
Meeting Agenda
The Spring 2007 CRC meeting, held jointly with BASC, featured a discussion of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4), and a Forum on Seamless Prediction and "Year of Tropical Convection". The IPCC AR4 session focused on the following topics/questions:

1. What are the key outstanding questions and high-priority research needs emerging from the IPCC AR4?
2. How can Working Group I research better inform the work of Working Group II and Working Group III?
3. What kind of research program would help improve the reliability of regional-scale results from coupled global climate models in order to increase confidence in future projections?
4. What can NAS/BASC/CRC do to help progress in these areas?

The Forum on Seamless Prediction and "Year of Tropical Convection" examined two documents/proposals and focused on these questions:

1. What is missing from these two documents? Are contrary opinions properly represented?
2. Does seamless prediction require unified modeling, and if so is "one size fits all" the best way to allocate resources?
3. Fundamental science questions:
a. What are the most crucial elements of the large-scale circulation that influence the development, organization and maintenance of tropical convection?
b. Under what circumstances and with what mechanisms are energy and momentum transferred from the convective scale to the mesoscale, from the mesoscale to the synoptic scale, and from the synoptic scale to the planetary scale?
c. How does organized tropical convection interact with the extra-tropics?

November 30 - December 1, 2006
The National Academies Keck Center
Washington, DC
Meeting Agenda
As the U.S. National Committee to the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the CRC is charged to maintain liaison with the WCRP in developing and sustaining an international program of climate research. In this role, the CRC held a full-day meeting in October 2005 with the objectives of assessing coordination of U.S. contributions to WCRP, identifying potential science gaps and redundancies, and identifying existing or emerging issues requiring more in-depth attention. Among other things, these discussions pointed to the need for more frequent information exchange between the WCRP and the U.S. agencies. To address this need, the CRC intends to devote a portion of its Fall meeting each year to facilitating these interactions.

This forum was focused around the question: "What are the signals of abrupt climate change in the different components of the climate system, and how do we optimize our ability to observe these signals?" Participants considered both the operational components and the substantial research underpinning required for developing an effective early warning system.


March 22-23, 2006
The National Academies Keck Center
Washington, DC
Meeting Agenda
Topics addressed:

  1. The CRC was updated on CCSP activities.
  2. Lessons learned from the Review of CCSP Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.1 were considered.
  3. A Forum was held on Development of Integrated Earth System Analysis Capability, exploring opportunities to extend current analysis of individual Earth system components to assimilate the full range of current observations.
  4. The committee provided oversight for ongoing CRC activities.
  5. The CRC was updated on climate-related activities undertaken by other NRC entities.
  6. New CRC activities were discussed.


October 3-5, 2005
The National Academies Keck Center
Washington, DC
Meeting Agenda
Among other responsibilities, the Climate Research Committee serves as the U.S. National Committee to the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). In this capacity, the CRC has helped design WCRP activities, considered the effectiveness of U.S. participation in these activities, and reviewed their accomplishments. The CRC last took a broad look at the U.S. contribution to the WCRP in a 2001 report titled Comments on Catalyzing U.S. World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Activities. With the recent evolution of the WCRP activities to focus on the Coordinated Observation and Prediction of the Earth System (COPES) effort, the CRC devoted much of this meeting to learning more about future WCRP activities and considering how these programs can be improved based on past successes and failures of WCRP. The committee also heard presentations on recent developments at NASA.


April 12-13, 2005
The National Academies Keck Center
Washington, DC
Meeting Agenda
The CRC addressed a wide variety of topics at this meeting.

  1. The CRC met jointly with the Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change to discuss potential joint activities on climate change uncertainty and decision support.
  2. The CRC discussed the development of prospectuses for two CCSP synthesis and assessment products (Product 1.2: Past climate variability and change in the Arctic and at high latitudes and Product 1.3: Re-analyses of historical climate data for key atmospheric features. Implications for attribution of causes of observed change).
  3. The CRC reviewed the status of the suite of recently completed reports, ongoing studies, and new project ideas under their oversight.
  4. A Forum on Seasonal-to-Interannual Climate Forecasts: Current Capabilities and Future Challenges was held in coordination with the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate.


October 25-27, 2004
The National Academies Keck Center
Washington, DC
Meeting Agenda
Day two of this meeting consisted of a forum on characterizing and communicating climate change uncertainty. Climate change information, particularly projections of future climate, will always be associated with often significant uncertainty. As this information is increasingly used in a variety of societal applications - from water, energy, and agricultural management to national and international policy making - it will become more important for associated uncertainties to be characterized and communicated in a manner that effectively informs decision making. This forum will explore the ways in which uncertainties in climate change science might be most effectively characterized and communicated, in particular to more effectively inform climate change decision making.


April 7-9, 2004
The National Academies Keck Center
Washington, DC
Meeting Agenda
The Climate Research Committee met jointly with the Coordinating Committee on Global Change on April 8-9 for a workshop on issues in global change. The workshop was designed to be a forum for discussion of four main issues:

  1. What can be learned from the experiences of existing advisory bodies to help inform the Climate Change Science Program's (CCSP's) decisions about how to obtain independent oversight for the program?
  2. What can be learned from past global change science and technology assessments to ensure that the CCSP's synthesis and assessment products effectively build on past research, are developed with the involvement of scientists and relevant stakeholders, and are reviewed in a transparent manner?
  3. What can be learned from recent National Academies' studies about how future Earth observing systems could more effectively generate the data needed in previously underemphasized areas of the CCSP, such as ecosystems, land use and land cover change, water cycle, human dimensions, economics, impacts, adaptation, and mitigation?
  4. How should the new National Academies study on "Earth Observations from Space" be organized to be most useful to its sponsors, other federal agencies, and the ongoing activities of the international Group on Earth Observations (GEO)?
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