[Congressional Bills 111th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1667 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

111th CONGRESS
  1st Session
                                S. 1667

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 past, assess present, and 
 predict future human-induced and natural processes of abrupt climate 
                    change, and for other purposes.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                           September 14, 2009

Ms. Collins (for herself, Ms. Cantwell, Ms. Snowe, Mr. Kerry, and Mrs. 
  Gillibrand) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
   referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
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 past, assess present, and 
 predict future human-induced and natural processes of abrupt climate 
                    change, and for other purposes.

    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 2009''.

SEC. 2. ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE DEFINED.

    In this Act, 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. 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 carry out, a 
program of extramural awards, made on a peer-reviewed and competitive 
basis, to conduct scientific research on abrupt climate change.
    (b) Purposes of Program.--The purposes of the program established 
under subsection (a) shall be 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 simulation of climate change by such models 
        against an improved global array of records of past abrupt 
        climate changes.

SEC. 4. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

    (a) Authorization of Appropriations.--There is authorized to be 
appropriated to the Secretary of Commerce for each of fiscal years 2010 
through 2016, $10,000,000 to carry out the research program established 
under section 3(a).
    (b) Availability of Funds.--Amounts appropriated pursuant to the 
authorization of appropriations in subsection (a) are authorized to 
remain available until expended.
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