To predict how Earth's climate will change regionally and globally--and how it will change now and in the next decade, the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Department of Energy (DOE) announced new grant recipients to research these questions.

The awards were made through the interagency Decadal and Regional Climate Prediction Using Earth System Models (EaSM) Program. NSF has invested $22.7 million in the awards; USDA, $5.2 million; and DOE, $3.3 million. Among the goals of the EaSM program is achieving reliable global and regional predictions of decadal climate variability and change through an understanding of the coupled physical, chemical, biological and human processes that drive the climate system.

Awardees are working to quantify the effects of climate variability and change on ecological, agricultural and other human systems, and to identify and quantify "feedback loops" through which humans affect the environment.