NCAR is perhaps the greatest U.S. climate research institution. It draws not merely post-docs, but prominent researchers from around the U.S. and around the globe. It is federally funded via the National Science Foundation and administered by a consortium of universities (UCAR).
This comprehensive study of the vulnerabilities and potential impacts of climate change on the U.S. was mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. It includes studies looking specifically at 19 different U.S. regions. Assembled by hundreds of experts from academia and elsewhere, it was completed in the late Clinton administration and partly suppressed by the Bush administration.
The US Geological Survey offers information on various climate change topics, publications, news, FAQs, related links, briefings, podcasts, and more.
The US is required by a 1990 law to maintain the GCRIO to disseminate scientific research and other information useful in preventing, mitigating, or adapting to the effects of global change. Unable to disband the office, the Bush administration has given it little funding support. Its online library of key studies and documents from past years is still valuable.
USFS has an extensive ongoing R&D program regarding climate change. The program provides long term research, scientific knowledge, expertise, regional resources and tools that can be used to manage, restore, and conserve forests and rangelands.
An arm of the Energy Dept.'s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the CDIAC focuses on research and data collection about carbon dioxide and the Earth's carbon cycle. It also tracks other greenhouse gases through its World Data Center for Atmospheric Trace Gases.
This research component of NOAA conducts all kinds of basic monitoring programs to compile long-term series of measurements and observations of the conditions that may be involved in climate change. The CMDL has now been merged into the Global Monitoring Division of the Earth System Research Laboratory.
This is the repository ("world's largest") of much of the raw data about the U.S. and planetary temperature record and other climate data. It is in Asheville, North Carolina.
Another pioneering climate lab that specializes in computer modeling of climate. No longer headed by the now-retired Dr. Jerry D. Mahlman, it is keeping a lower public profile these days. It is near Princeton University.
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