Global Climate Change: A Question of Our Future

Nevertheless, the impacts that such warming could have on weather, ocean levels, natural habitat, crop lands, and energy use demand that we seek deeper understanding. One outcome of new knowledge would be the ability to better assess policies for reducing production of greenhouse gases.

The Department of Energy and its predecessor organizations developed capabilities to help resolve these issues. Early efforts to model accident scenarios at its facilities in the 1950s and 1960s were followed by modeling regional energy issues like acid rain. Today DOE supports efforts to understand the range of global climate change issues including research and modeling needed to

• improve understanding of factors affecting the earth's radiant-energy balance, i.e., the balance of solar energy trapped in the atmosphere versus that reflected back to space

• predict accurately any global and regional climate change induced by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, known to trap radiant energy in the atmosphere

• quantify sources and sinks of energy-related greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, for instance, seeking to understand the role forests, oceans and ocean margins play in absorbing carbon dioxide

• improve the scientific basis for assessing the potential consequences of climatic changes, and the benefits and costs of alternative response options.

Major research efforts are underway at many national laboratories and universities to develop the broad multi-disciplinary understanding needed to guide policies that could protect our future environment.

Co-Lead Laboratories for display:

Contacts: