Washington

Improved computer models, accelerated studies of the global carbon cycle, and standardization of climate data are among the priorities listed in the Bush administration's draft strategy for climate-change research, released on 11 November.

The plan sets an overall direction for the Climate Change Science Program, which was created last year to address near-term uncertainties in climate science. The new programme merged the $1.7-billion, multi-agency US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) with the narrower $40-million Climate Change Research Initiative.

The new strategy acknowledges that global warming is under way, but reflects the Bush administration's wariness on the subject by emphasizing gaps in knowledge that need to be filled before policy-makers can make confident decisions.

As well as listing high-priority research needs, such as characterizing atmospheric aerosols, the plan calls for investment in observational networks, including an Integrated Ocean Observing System.

The strategy will now undergo extensive review, starting with a workshop in Washington next month for scientists and policy-makers. It also will be vetted by a fast-track National Academy of Sciences panel chaired by Thomas Graedel, director of Yale University's Center for Industrial Ecology. A final version of the plan is expected to be released next April.

The plan's authors say that they relied heavily on previous academy reports that outlined priorities for climate-change research. But conspicuously absent from the document is any mention of the controversial 'National Assessment' published by the USGCRP in 2000, which described possible regional affects of climate change in the United States. The new strategy states flatly that modelled projections “are often contradictory and are not sufficiently reliable tools for planning”.

The National Assessment infuriated global-warming sceptics, who sued to prevent its release, charging that it was politically motivated. The anger has not subsided. Last month Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a public-policy organization based in Washington, called for members of the team that produced the National Assessment to be barred from next month's workshop.

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