Research On Global Climate Heats Up

Until six months ago or so, ecologist H. Ronald Pulliam never bothered with fax machines. Now his work depends on them. Every day he and 20 colleagues use the machines to iron out the details of a multimillion-dollar, multidisciplinary, multi-university proposal to study how plants interact with the atmosphere. But fax machines aren't the only things that have changed the way Pulliam, director of the Institute on Ecology at the University of Georgia, carries out his work on global change. Indeed, his proposal this month to the National Science Foundation marks the emergence of global change as "big science." The equivalent of the human genome project for earth and environmental scientists, the proposal heralds a new era of collaboration, not only among scientists from many disciplines, but also among federal agencies and even among countries. Worldwide, investigators and policymakers are gearing up to understand and deal with myriad factors that point to a precipitous global increase in temperatures. At stake is humankind's survival, or at least the energy-intensive lifestyle to which we have become so accustomed. "We're in the middle of a revolution in the way the earth is looked at," says John A. Eddy, who heads the Office of Interdisciplinary Earth Studies at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colo. "In most areas there will be a genuine shift in the way we look at science and in the way science will be funded. It will have a very big effect." Global warming is melting traditional boundaries. Increasingly, chemists, ecologists, computer specialists, meteorologists, social scientists, and others depend on colleagues across the hall, the campus, the nation, or even across the globe to Supply missing pieces in the earth systems puzzle. They are forging new, holistic disciplines as they try to integrate physical and biological parameters into computational approaches to understand earth's processes. However, like the future of our planet, the fate of science under this new global regime is still far from certain. This new approach has some scientists worried about the fate of the individual investigator. And the strong, sustained federal support that will be needed is so far only a promise. The issue has certainly caught the attention of scientists, politicians, and the public. In January, the National Academy of Sciences warned that global change might be the most pressing international issue of the next century and called for reducing use of fossil fuels and for stemming ozone loss from the atmosphere. Last month the issue dominated the agenda of the annual summit of the leaders of the seven Western economic powers. Congress is mulling over a half-dozen bills to combat the greenhouse effect, and President Bush's first budget request to Congress; for fiscal year 1990, was accompanied by a four-color brochure, entitled Our Changing Planet: A U.S. Strategy for Global Change Research, which asks for $190 million to pursue seven broad research objectives. The federal effort is being led by the Committee on Earth Sciences (CES), a panel composed of representatives from seven federal agencies that sponsor research related to global climate change. "Five or six years ago, there was an enormous amount of turf fighting among the various groups over the global climate issue," says Harvey E. Jeffries, a professor of environmental sciences and engineering at the University of North Carolina who has worked closely with the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the seven agencies involved. But competition has turned into cooperation, most recently in the form of a detailed 200,page research program, complete with scientific priorities (The Scientist, July 24, 1989, page 10). "The global change program by definition is trying to tackle questions that are bigger than any one agency," says Michael R. Riches of the Energy Department's carbon dioxide program. "The agencies are really serious about trying to take the problems jointly." Pressing Research Issues The agencies have no choice. Policymakers want answers that scientists cannot yet provide. Investigators need bigger, faster computers to run more comprehensive models. Better data about earth's physical and living processes must be gathered, pieced together and fed into the models. "People have come to realize that the major scientific issues are those issues that stem from the effects of the global environment," says Berrien Moore III, director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire. The urgency wrought of the ozone depletion and documented increases in carbon dioxide and trace gases had galvanized scientists. "It has not taken very long for every researcher to realize that he can only do a small part of it," observes Jeffries. "It calls for cooperation on a scale that has never been done before." Moore started to develop those linkages in 1985 when he pulled together into one institute campus centers that focused on modeling, glacial studies, and space science. "There was a growing sense that with a lot of problems we were running up against, you really needed your colleagues," he recalls. Moore predicts that the institute's staff of 33 scientists could swell to 60 as global-change science takes off. A similar need for outside help led Pulliam to reach beyond his campus to five of the 39 schools that make up the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA). By being one of the first to approach the government's earth science panel with a project, his group has gotten a running start in the race to be a dominant player in global change research. Taking lessons from his own field, where high-energy physics projects can carry billion-dollar price tags, SURA President William Wallenmeyer had urged Pulliam to look beyond traditional project scopes. "He encouraged us to think large-what is really needed, not just what the funding agencies are offering," Pulliam recalls. Pulliam's team includes climate modelers, physiologists, experts in vegetation dynamics, a paleoecologist, and a policy analyst, all of whom have sought funds from one or more agencies. "But we wanted to put together an integrated package and submit it to one place," Pulliam explains. "In some ways, this is a test case," he says about his group's request to NSF for about $15 million over the next five years. Money isn't the only obstacle. "Our next major problem after getting funding is to make sure we have the people," says UCAR's Eddy. "We have to make [students] more aware of earth system science." He and others fear that too few scientists have been trained to take a global view of their science, and fewer still have the interdisciplinary bent the problem demands. Global Concerns Although the payoff may be large, such team efforts do have their drawbacks. SURA has spent thousands of dollars to send scientists, and their materials, from one campus to another. With so many investigators there were bound to be delays, missed deadlines, ruffled egos, and personality clashes. An even bigger challenge will be to integrate the data and the participants from the 10 projects. It will be a challenge that increasing numbers of scientists will face in the next decade. That trend has some scientists fearing for the survival of the individual investigator. But most experts argue that individuals are the backbone of science. Jarvis L. Moyers, director of NSF's atmospheric chemistry program, laments the emphasis on team approaches. "There is a tendency that because people think they have to be interdisciplinary, the projects are more interdisciplinary than they need to be, and as a result, the disciplinary effort is weakened. But you can't work at the interface if you don't know exactly what's going on in the compartments that are connected." Other scientists worry that science itself will be shackled. NSF is widely seen as the bastion of basic research, in which scientists set the agenda by proposing projects they deem worthwhile. "With global change, we will be much more restrictive in what we will consider," says Moyers. Adds Bill Harris, who is executive officer for NSF's biological, behavioral, and social sciences directorate: "I hope the scientific community would adapt for these large societal needs." Everyone agrees that there isn't enough money to go around, and that universities will need to set priorities. "It calls for levels of coordination that are unprecedented," says Harris. Even so, the global change effort will not affect every scientist. "It will not be enough for a scientist to say the work fits into climate change," Jeffries warns. Investigators must think through their answers. THE 1990 BUDGET AND GLOBAL CLIMATE RESEARCH President Bush has asked Congress for $190.5 million next year to support global change research. Those dollars will be spread across seven agencies to cover research, observations, data management, and facilities. The goals are to establish a comprehensive monitoring program, improve our understanding of earth systems processes, and develop better conceptual and predictive climate models. Though tiny in comparison to defense expenditures, the AIDS budget, or even big-ticket science items like the space station and the superconducting supercollider, the monies have energized a scientific community used to budget cuts or, at best, level funding. Only about 15% of 1990's funds will finance truly new programs, such as the $8 million for the Environmental Protection Agency to pursue ecological studies and $7 million to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for understanding the effects of ultraviolet light on plants. The remainder of the $190.5 million-a $56.5 million increase from 1989 supports existing programs such as NSF's Global Geosciences or the Department of Energy's (DOE) carbon dioxide efforts. The $20 million for NASA is primarily setup money for the Earth Observing System, a remote sensing program that already taps about 350 scientists worldwide. That number is expected to grow by 100 once the system is completed in 1996. For some programs, the funds are a lifeline to what promises to be better tittles. "The earth sciences' road in the United States was in a little disrepair," says Michael Hall of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "No matter how much we tried [to focus on new starts], some of it [the budget] has to go for filling potholes." NOAA's portion, for example, Will be used both to start a Global and Climate Change Program and restore funds to its Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere program begun in 1985. Like other agencies, NSF sees the 1990 budget as an extension of ongoing efforts. In 1989, half of its 30 divisions supported some activity in global environmental change, including about $55 million specifically focused in this area. In 1990, those divisions concerned with biogeochemical dynamics and ecological systems, biological sciences, and geosciences in particular, have asked for the biggest increases-about $15 million and $20 million, respectively. And about $4 million will go to the social sciences for a new program dealing with human interactions. NSF is looking for proposals that study how humans change the biosphere and how plants react to environmental shifts. Eventually it hopes to have regional ecosystem models that will show how climate change affects soils and plant community composition, as well as some large-scale enclosures where scientists can test model Predictions. "It will put that type of biology into the big-science arena," notes Bill Harris of NSF, at a cost of several million dollars to build and operate. In addition, long-term monitoring programs need to be established. But the 1990 program represents only the tip of the iceberg. That iceberg should surface in 1991 as agencies unveil more programs with global change components. For now, the Interior Department is represented by the U.S. Geological Survey. But next year, efforts by the National Parks Service, a Minerals Management ocean circulation study, and programs in resource ethnology and rangeland studies will be added to the list. NASA's Shelby G. Tilford points out that most of NASA's $440 million environmental program relates to global change, and it plans to shift as much of its programs into the "focused" category as the Office of Management and Budget will allow. Such a comprehensive approach may prove useful in retaining funds. "It forces the administration, scientists, Congress, and the media to look at it as a package both nationally and internationally," argues Michael R. Riches, a staffer with the DOE carbon dioxide research program. Congress may be less likely to cut funding for a satellite, for example, if it understands how other programs depend on that satellite. But others fear this approach is deceptive, "We should not tie in every technology program in the world," says New Hampshire's Berrien Moore III, a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Global Climate Committee, "That gives people the false idea that a lot of the money is new." -E.P.

Research On Global Climate Heats Up

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