How Will Climate Change Affect the Mid-Atlantic Region? (open access)

How Will Climate Change Affect the Mid-Atlantic Region?

Average temperature has risen 1 degree F over the last century in the Mid-Atlantic Region as well as across the globe. Climate science is developing rapidly and many studies project additional warming. Although the future is uncertain and difficult to predict, our best science suggests the following changes are likely. The Mid-Atlantic Region will be somewhat warmer and perhaps wetter, resulting in a wide range of impacts on plants, wildlife, and humans. Human activities that release heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere will continue to accelerate the observed warming trend. Climate change will compound existing stresses from population density and development. The region's overall economy is quite resilient, but impacts will be more severe for some economic activities and localities.
Date: June 2001
Creator: United States Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management (open access)

Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management

This executive order establishes guidelines for how federal agencies consume natural resources.
Date: January 26, 2007
Creator: United States. President (2001-2009 : Bush)
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Environmental Variability and Climate Change (open access)

Environmental Variability and Climate Change

The PAGES research community works toward improving our understanding of the Earth's changing environment. By placing current and future global changes in a long term perspective, they can be assessed relative to natural variability. Since the industrial revolution, the Earth System has become increasingly affected by human activities. Natural and human processes are woven into a complex tapestry of forcings, responses, feedbacks and consequences. Deciphering this complexity is essential as we plan for the future. Paleoenvironmental research is the only way to investigate Earth System processes that operate on timescales longer than the period of instrumental records.
Date: 2001
Creator: Past Global Changes (PAGES)
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Past Climate Variability and Change in the Arctic and at High Latitudes (open access)

Past Climate Variability and Change in the Arctic and at High Latitudes

This Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product addresses current capabilities to integrate observations of the climate system into a consistent description of past and current conditions through the method of reanalysis. In addition, the Product assesses present capabilities to attribute causes for climate variations and trends over North America during the reanalysis period, which extends from the mid-twentieth century to the present. This Product reviews Past Climate Variability and Change in the Arctic and at High Latitudes. Paleoclimate records play a key role in our understanding of Earth's past and present climate system and in our confidence in predicting future climate changes. Paleoclimate data help to elucidate past and present active mechanisms of climate change by placing the short instrumental record into a longer term context and by permitting models to be tested beyond the limited time that instrumental measurements have been available. Recent observations in the Arctic have identified large ongoing changes and important climate feedback mechanisms that multiply the effects of global-scale climate changes. As discussed in this report, paleoclimate data show that land and sea ice have grown with cooling temperatures and have shrunk with warming ones, amplifying temperature changes while causing and responding to …
Date: January 2009
Creator: Climate Change Science Program (U.S.). Subcommittee on Global Change Research.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Third Biennial Report of the Climate Neutral Working Group (open access)

Third Biennial Report of the Climate Neutral Working Group

In accordance with the directives outlined in Executive Order #14-03, this Third Biennial Report of the Climate Neutral Working Group (CNWG) provides an update regarding: The state of the science of responding to climate change; Efforts to meet the goals of the Executive Order; Future planned steps and their anticipated impacts, expected challenges, and opportunities; Opportunities to initiate a statewide voluntary greenhouse gas emissions registry; The feasibility of a carbon emissions cap and trading program. Also summarized within this report are a number of related ongoing efforts within state government that will facilitate an expanded and coordinated campaign to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Recommended actions for continued GHG emissions reductions are presented in this report to be considered for implementation during 2009 – 2010 by Vermont State Government.
Date: July 2009
Creator: Climate Neutral Working Group
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Scientific Collections: Mission-Critical Infrastructure for Federal Science Agencies (open access)

Scientific Collections: Mission-Critical Infrastructure for Federal Science Agencies

This report describes the nature and state of federally-held scientific collections which exist for scientific study to provide insight about historical trends in biodiversity, climate, and ecosystems.
Date: December 23, 2008
Creator: National Science and Technology Council (U.S.). Committee on Science, Interagency Working Group on Scientific Collections.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
The United States National Report on Systematic Observations for Climate for 2008: National Activities with Respect to the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Implementation Plan (open access)

The United States National Report on Systematic Observations for Climate for 2008: National Activities with Respect to the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Implementation Plan

Long-term, high-accuracy, stable environmental observations are essential to define the state of the global integrated Earth system, its history and its future variability and change. Observations for climate include: (1) operational weather observations, when appropriate care has been exercised to establish high accuracy; (2) limited-duration observations collected as part of research investigations to elucidate chemical, dynamical, biological, or radiative processes that contribute to maintaining climate patterns or to their variability; (3) high accuracy, high precision observations to document decadal-to-centennial changes; and (4) observations of climate proxies, collected to extend the instrumental climate record to remote regions and back in time to provide information on climate change at millennial and longer time scales. This report was requested by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in order to serve as input to see how progress has been made with respect to the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Implementation Plan developed in 2004 In accordance with the UNFCCC guidelines, the sections of the report delineate specific U.S. climate monitoring activities in several distinct yet integrated areas as follows: (1) common issues; (2) non-satellite atmospheric observations; (3) non-satellite oceanic observations; (4) non-satellite terrestrial observations; (5) satellite global atmospheric, oceanic, and terrestrial …
Date: September 2008
Creator: U.S. Climate Change Science Program's (CCSP) Observations Working Group
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Science Plan and Implementation Strategy (open access)

Science Plan and Implementation Strategy

This Science Plan and Implementation Strategy sets out the research agenda for the second phase of IGBP. The document describes the IGBP strategy for producing high quality, unbiased, credible, fundamental scientific research in the area of global change: a strategy centered on ten projects, to be carried out by the several thousand scientists worldwide who are part of the IGBP network. Further, the document describes how the organization will communicate the results of this research to different audiences, in order to realize its vision: "to provide scientific knowledge to improve the sustainability of the living Earth".
Date: 2006
Creator: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Revised Research Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (open access)

Revised Research Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program

This Revised Research Plan is an update to the 2003 Strategic Plan of the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), a document that was developed via a thorough, open and transparent multi-year process involving a wide range of scientists and managers. The Strategic Plan has long-term value to CCSP, but like any strategic plan, it must be supplemented by shorter-term revisions that take into account both advances in the science and changes in societal needs, and CCSP has an ongoing long-range strategic planning process to ensure that these needs are met. The Revised Research Plan (hereinafter referred to as the Research Plan) draws on CCSP's long-range planning process and provides this update, in compliance with the terms of the Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990. In the Research Plan, the reader will find several things: 1) an updated statement of vision, goals and capabilities consistent with CCSP's current Strategic Plan but reflecting both scientific progress and the evolution of the Program based on accomplishments and evolving societal and environmental needs; 2) a description of the relationship of the Research Plan to the current Scientific Assessment; 3) highlights of ways in which the program is evolving in the context of …
Date: May 2008
Creator: US Climate Change Science Program
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Global Change and Mountain Regions:  The Mountain Research Initiative (open access)

Global Change and Mountain Regions: The Mountain Research Initiative

The strong altitudinal gradients in mountain regions provide unique and sometimes the best opportunities to detect and analyse global change processes and phenomena. Meteorological, hydrological, cryospheric and ecological conditions change strongly over relatively short distances; thus biodiversity tends to be high, and characteristic sequences of ecosystems and cryospheric systems are found along mountain slopes. The boundaries between these systems experience shifts due to environmental change and thus may be used as indicators of such changes. The higher parts of many mountain ranges are not affected by direct human activities. These areas include many national parks and other protected environments. They may serve as locations where the environmental impacts of climate change alone, including changes in atmospheric chemistry, can be studied directly. Mountain regions are distributed all over the globe, from the Equator almost to the poles and from oceanic to highly continental climates. This global distribution allows us to perform comparative regional studies and to analyse the regional differentiation of environmental change processes as characterised above. Therefore, within the IGBP an Initiative for Collaborative Research on Global Change and Mountain Regions was developed, which strives to achieve an integrated approach for observing, modelling and investigating global change phenomena and processes …
Date: 2001
Creator: Bekcer, Alfred & Bugmann, Harald
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Plausible Biological Cause For Major Climate Events (open access)

Plausible Biological Cause For Major Climate Events

Scientific news article about Snowball Earth eras. These are times when ice periodically covered the globe, and the era called the Cambrian Explosion, which produced the first fossils of almost all major categories of animals living today.
Date: August 10, 2001
Creator: Kennedy, Barbara
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Global Change and the Earth System: A planet under pressure (open access)

Global Change and the Earth System: A planet under pressure

The PAGES research community works toward improving our understanding of the Earth's changing environment. By placing current and future global changes in a long term perspective, they can be assessed relative to natural variability. Since the industrial revolution, the Earth System has become increasingly affected by human activities. Natural and human processes are woven into a complex tapestry of forcings, responses, feedbacks and consequences. Deciphering this complexity is essential as we plan for the future. Paleoenvironmental research is the only way to investigate Earth System processes that operate on timescales longer than the period of instrumental records.
Date: 2001
Creator: Global Environmental Change Programmes
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Protocol amending 1949 Convention of Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission : message from the President of the United States transmitting protocol to amend the 1949 Convention on the Establishment of an Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, done at Guayaquil, June 11, 1999, and signed by the United States, subject to ratification, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on the same date (open access)

Protocol amending 1949 Convention of Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission : message from the President of the United States transmitting protocol to amend the 1949 Convention on the Establishment of an Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, done at Guayaquil, June 11, 1999, and signed by the United States, subject to ratification, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on the same date

This treaty allows organizations that are not governments of states to join the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Convention, and be subject to its conservation and management protocols.
Date: 2001
Creator: United States. President (1993-2001 : Clinton) & Pickering, Thomas Reeve, 1931-
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Capability and cost assessment of the major forest nations to measure and monitor their forest carbon (open access)

Capability and cost assessment of the major forest nations to measure and monitor their forest carbon

According to the Executive Summary, the aims and objective of this report are to provide an assessment of national capacity and capability in 25 tropical countries for measuring and monitoring forest as a requirement for reporting on REDD under IPCC guidelines. This paper was commissioned by the United Kingdom Office of Climate Change as background work to its report 'Climate Change: Financing Global Forests' (the Eliasch Review).
Date: April 7, 2008
Creator: Harcastle, P. D.; Baird, David & Harden, Virginia
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Our Changing Planet: The U.S. Climate Change Science Program for Fiscal Year 2006 (open access)

Our Changing Planet: The U.S. Climate Change Science Program for Fiscal Year 2006

This Fiscal Year 2006 edition of Our Changing Planet describes a wide range of new and emerging observational capabilities which, combined with the Climate Change Science Program’s analytical work, lead to advances in understanding the underlying processes responsible for climate variability and change. The report highlights progress being made to explore the uses and limitations of evolving knowledge to manage risks and opportunities related to climate variability, and documents activities to promote cooperation between the U.S. scientific community and its worldwide counterparts.
Date: November 2005
Creator: Climate Change Science Program (U.S.)
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone:  Science Plan and Implementation Strategy (open access)

Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone: Science Plan and Implementation Strategy

Coastal zones play a key role in Earth System functioning, by contributing significantly to the life support systems of most societies. Human activities modifying riverine hydrology and riverine material fluxes to the coastal zone, have increased in both scale and rate of change in the last 200 years. The underlying processes that drive changes to coastal systems occur at a multiplicity of temporal and spatial scales. These changes alter the availability of ecosystem goods and services. However, disciplinary fragmentation impedes our ability to understand the regional and global changes that affect coastal systems, and thus limits our ability to guide management and decision making. Progress has been made in understanding the changes in Earth System processes that affect the coastal zone, and the role of coastal systems in global change. This includes identifying proxies that describe the state of coastal systems under existing conditions and change scenarios. Typologies have been developed to assist in the interpolation of results into areas where primary information is lacking. This has enabled a first-order up-scaling to a global synthesis.
Date: 2005
Creator: Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Climate and Global Change Interagency Inventory Data Sheet (open access)

Climate and Global Change Interagency Inventory Data Sheet

The Climate and Global Change Interagency Inventory Data Sheet is a working document (dated August 2002) that includes information provided by federal agencies regarding their climate and global change research activities.
Date: August 26, 2002
Creator: Climate Change Science Program
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Weather and Highways: Report of a Policy Forum (open access)

Weather and Highways: Report of a Policy Forum

This report of a policy forum on "Weather and Highways" presents recommendations that, if implemented, could offer considerable benefits to the safety of the nation's traveling public and the national economy by supporting the effective application of weather information services to the operation of our road systems. The AMS Atmospheric Policy Program developed this forum to address the issues connected with effective use of road weather information. The participants included nearly 100 public, private, and academic representatives of weather information providers; transportation managers and users; and policy makers knowledgeable about the nation's highway system.
Date: 2004
Creator: Atmospheric Policy Program American Meteorological Society
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (open access)

Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program

This strategic plan has been prepared by the 13 federal agencies participating in the CCSP, with coordination by the CCSP staff under the leadership of Dr. Richard H. Moss. This strategic plan responds to the President's direction that climate change research activities be accelerated to provide the best possible scientific information to support public discussion and decision-making on climate-related issues.The plan also responds to Section 104 of the Global Change Research Act of 1990, which mandates the development and periodic updating of a long-term national global change research plan coordinated through the National Science and Technology Council.This is the first comprehensive update of a strategic plan for U.S. global change and climate change research since the original plan for the U.S. Global Change Research Program was adopted at the inception of the program in 1989.
Date: July 2003
Creator: Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Our Planet, September 2009 (open access)

Our Planet, September 2009

Magazine of the United Nations Environment Programme discussing worldwide environmental policies and other concerns. This issue is devoted to policies meant to reduce the carbon emissions from cars, trucks, and planes by converting fleets to cleaner, renewable fuels, and by moving government subsidies from highway infrastructure to public transportation.
Date: September 2009
Creator: United Nations Environment Programme
Object Type: Journal/Magazine/Newsletter
System: The UNT Digital Library
Research at JRC in support of EU Climate Change Policy Making (open access)

Research at JRC in support of EU Climate Change Policy Making

The present (third edition) of “Research at the JRC in Support of EU Climate Change Policy Making” provides overview of the Joint Research Centre research activities in support of EU climate change policy making. This document also presents activities, coordinated within the JRC’s Climate Change Priority Area, that will contribute to a sound foundation of scientific information for future policy actions.
Date: 2008
Creator: Institute for Environment and Sustainability (European Commission. Joint Research Centre)
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Abrupt Climate Change: Final Report (open access)

Abrupt Climate Change: Final Report

This document is part of the Synthesis and Assessment Products (SAP) described in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Strategic Plan. This report is meant to reduce uncertainty in projections of how the Earth's climate and related systems may change in the future. It provides scientific information for supporting the decision-making audience and the expert scientific and stakeholder community.
Date: December 2008
Creator: Climate Change Science Program (U.S.). Subcommittee on Global Change Research.
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (open access)

Climate Change Impacts on the United States: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change

This assessment examines how global climate climate change affects the United States, and describes strategies for adaptation.
Date: 2000
Creator: National Assessment Synthesis Team (U.S.)
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Our Changing Planet: The U.S. Climate Change Science Program, 2007 (open access)

Our Changing Planet: The U.S. Climate Change Science Program, 2007

This Fiscal Year 2007 edition of Our Changing Planet describes a wide range of new and emerging observational capabilities which, combined with the Climate Change Science Program’s analytical work, lead to advances in understanding the underlying processes responsible for climate variability and change. The report highlights progress in exploring the uses and limitations of evolving knowledge to manage risks and opportunities related to climate variability, and documents activities to promote cooperation between the U.S. scientific community and its worldwide counterparts.
Date: November 2006
Creator: Climate Change Science Program (U.S.)
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library