To provide for the development and coordination of a comprehensive and integrated United States research program that assists the people of the United States and the world to understand, assess, and predict human-induced and natural processes of abrupt climate change.

June 2, 2003

Ms. COLLINS (for herself, Mrs. MURRAY, Mr. JEFFORDS, Ms. CANTWELL, and Ms. SNOWE) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

To provide for the development and coordination of a comprehensive and integrated United States research program that assists the people of the United States and the world to understand, assess, and predict human-induced and natural processes of abrupt climate change.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Abrupt Climate Change Research Act of 2003'.

SEC. 2. ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH PROGRAM.

(a) ESTABLISHMENT OF PROGRAM- The Secretary of Commerce shall establish within the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and shall carry out, a program of scientific research on abrupt climate change.

(b) PURPOSES OF PROGRAM- The purposes of the program are as follows:

(1) To develop a global array of terrestrial and oceanographic indicators of paleoclimate in order to sufficiently identify and describe past instances of abrupt climate change.

(2) To improve understanding of thresholds and nonlinearities in geophysical systems related to the mechanisms of abrupt climate change.

(3) To incorporate such mechanisms into advanced geophysical models of climate change.

(4) To test the output of such models against an improved global array of records of past abrupt climate changes.

(c) ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE DEFINED- In this section, the term `abrupt climate change' means a change in the climate that occurs so rapidly or unexpectedly that human or natural systems have difficulty adapting to the climate as changed.

SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

There is authorized to be appropriated to the Department of Commerce for fiscal years 2003, to remain available until expended, $60,000,000 to carry out the research program required under section 2.

END