Wallace Broecker, one of the first scientists to declare that polluting human actions caused climate change died recently. In 1975, Broecker embraced the term "global warming" in a publication for Science, where he showed that high carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the use of fossil fuels increase the Earth's temperature. Puerto Rico is vulnerable to global warming, associated with extreme droughts and intense hurricanes in the Caribbean region. This is one of the findings described by the local and international scientists in the Caribbean chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4). Almost 50 years after Broecker warned about the need to mitigate global warming, climate change is not a topic that is given sufficient priority in the political scene in Puerto Rico. This must change.

During the past months, ambassadors of the PR-SPAN have been part of important investigations that reflect the current climate state, effects of climate change and the impacts of atmospheric phenomena inside and outside of Puerto Rico. Last November, the United States Congress published the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), a report on climate change in the United States and its territories. Isabel K. Parés-Ramos, environmental scientist and PR-SPAN ambassador, was part of the group of researchers who led the chapter on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.