Although scientists agree they lack important knowledge about past climate changes, especially those that occurred quickly, funding for a key climate change research program has been eliminated from the proposed federal budget, a portion of which will be considered by a Senate appropriations subcommittee later this week. Knowing what changes may lie ahead will better enable humans to prepare for them. That’s why funding for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration climate and global change research program should be returned to the federal budget.

Maine’s senators are leading the effort to do that. Both Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins have written letters to colleagues and committee chairmen asking that $9.2 million be restored to NOAA’s global climate change research program, including $4 million specifically for abrupt climate change and paleoclimate research.

In the words of esteemed University of Maine climate researcher George Denton: “We have no satisfactory understanding of what triggers abrupt climate changes nor do we know why they grow to have such great amplitude. … Our chances of developing the means to prevent human or ecological tragedy would be much improved if abrupt change could be anticipated.”

Far from being the stuff of a science fiction movie, abrupt climate change is real and needs to be better understood. Both the National Academy of Sciences and the Pentagon have recently said so. The best way to understand what could happen in the future is to study what happened in the past. Researchers, including several at UMaine, are collecting and analyzing ice cores gathered around the world. This work is critical now because much of the ice is melting faster than scientists can gather cores.

Ice cores chronicle changes in the earth’s atmosphere. Captured in the ice are sea salt and dirt from storms and the chemical evidence of plant life during cold periods. Based on their findings from cores collected at spots around the globe, scientists can piece together what the climate was like at different points in time. Recent research has revealed that changes thought to occur over long periods of time could actually happen much more quickly. For example, shifts of 20 degrees have occurred within a decade.

Faced with a tight budget and a shift in research priorities, NOAA could no longer afford to support the research done at UMaine and Columbia University in New York, said Chet Koblinsky, director of the agency’s climate program. If, however, the money comes back, NOAA would “gladly” support these research efforts.

The consequences of abrupt climate change could be dire – famine, pestilence and war, according to the Pentagon – so it makes sense to devote research dollars to better understanding its causes and consequences.