“We are really taking a whole-of-government approach to address the challenges posed by climate change,” said Jennifer DeCesaro, Director for Climate Security and Resilience at the U.S. National Security Council, at a recent Wilson Center event hosted as part of the 2021 Berlin Climate and Security Conference. President Biden has taken an unequivocal position on climate change: The administration’s first order of business was to issue a series of executive orders aimed at catalyzing climate action. Putting the full institutional weight of the U.S. government behind this agenda requires a re-orientation of domestic and international security, development, and diplomacy. Creating “new muscle memory” on how we approach these typically siloed challenges is essential to elevating climate policy, said DeCesaro.

“If you’re a sea ice person, MOSAiC is the kind of experiment that you just live for,” said Don Perovich, a Dartmouth College researcher with the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. “It’s the kind of experiment you dream about. It’s an opportunity to spend a whole year on the ice, just watching how a floe evolves over time.” He spoke at a recent event sponsored by IARPC Collaborations, an Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) member space where scientists and others involved in Arctic research share knowledge and resources. The researchers on the expedition, said Perovich, aimed to collect data that would shed light on the causes and consequences of the evolving and diminished Arctic sea ice cover. MOSAiC’s mission was to facilitate a breakthrough in understanding the Arctic climate system and improve the world’s climate and weather forecasting models.

As the Atlantic hurricane season kicks off this month, some coastal communities in the United States and small-island nations in the Caribbean are still recovering from last year’s record-breaking damage. At the same time, the heavy rains pounding the East Coast this week are part of a long-term trend towards more severe heavy rainfall events that have led to deadly floods and threaten critical U.S. military bases. Even on sunny days, cities such as Norfolk and Manila contend with high tide or “nuisance” flooding—a phenomenon that has increased as much as nine-fold since the 1960s, according to NOAA.

During the 2016 campaign President Trump stated that clean water would be a top priority of his administration, telling ScienceDebate.org “it may be the most important issue we face as a nation for the next generation.” Now is the time to make good on that commitment.