Climate Research &
Modeling
The goal of the Climate Research and Modeling (CRM) Program is to understand and predict climate variability and change from weeks to decades to a century. The CRM Program directly supports the other Programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Mission Goal. CRM also contributes to the other four NOAA Mission Goals, Ecosystems, Weather and Water, Commerce and Transportation, and Mission Support.
An overarching objective of CRM is to develop and improve the capability to make intra-seasonal, seasonal, and decadal-scale predictions of climate and projections of future climate change on global to regional scales. This will enable regional and national managers to better plan for the impacts of climate variability and provide climate assessments and projections to support policy decisions with objective and accurate climate change information.
Activities under this Program are spread across several line offices and NOAA laboratories and also support, and leverage, an extensive array of competitively reviewed research. Research may be directly applied to climate projection and to policy decisions, and provides timely and adequate information needed to broaden the suite of non-carbon options for addressing climate change.
This Program maintains a suite of operational climate outlooks and implements the next generation operational climate outlooks and assessments by improving climate models, improving forecast generation techniques, and maintaining real-time climate monitoring data sets. This Program maintains and develops leading edge Earth System Models for the projection of future climate change on regional to global scales, including biogeochemical cycles, as well as developing estimates of future changes in climate radiative forcing agents.
Objectives of the Climate Research and Modeling Program include:
- Perform research to help understand atmospheric and oceanic processes, both natural and human-related, that may be directly applied to climate projections and to policy decisions that are related to limiting unwanted effects of future climate change.
- Provide new information on the climate roles of the radiatively important trace atmospheric species (e.g., fine-particle aerosols and ozone, as well as other chemically reactive forcing agents) that is needed to broaden the suite of non-carbon options available for policy support regarding the climate change issue.
- Reduce uncertainty in the information on atmospheric composition and feedbacks that contribute to changes in Earth's climate. A reduction of climate-forcing uncertainties is input needed for the development and improvement of global to regional climate models.
- Provide climate forecasts for multiple time-scales to enable regional and national managers to better plan for the impacts of climate variability and change.
Contact Information:
V. Ramaswamy, Program Manager
(609) 452-6510
V.Ramaswamy@noaa.gov
