09 February 2009
U.S. Agencies Plan National Climate Service Structure, Products
Service will go beyond early warning to help with mitigation, adaptation
This is the fourth article in a series about steps to address the effects of climate change at regional and local levels.
Washington — Around the planet, sea level is rising, sea surfaces are warming, ecosystems are changing, glaciers and permafrost are melting, extreme drought is increasing and seawater is becoming more acidic.
These are the early signs of climate-change effects that could continue for the next 1,000 years, according to a January 26 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study, and that already affect communities and their farmers, coastal managers, fisheries, emergency responders, water services, air quality and environment.
Today, in the United States and worldwide, there is no official source for the kind of authoritative, accessible and timely climate information that communities and regions will need to understand, mitigate and adapt over time to climate variability and change.
If established, a U.S. National Climate Service might provide such products and services. Representatives from a range of federal agencies have come together over the years to debate the mission, scope and leadership of such a service.
NATIONAL CLIMATE SERVICE
The strongest bid to lead a climate service comes from NOAA, which provides daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings, climate monitoring, fisheries management, coastal restoration and marine commerce support in the United States and often internationally.
“NOAA came up with the idea of a single authoritative source of climate information,” Thomas Armstrong, senior adviser for global change programs at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), told America.gov.
“I applaud that,” added Armstrong, who works with NOAA and other federal agency representatives on details of such a service, “but the issue is so big it requires an enterprise approach — a partnership of all agencies and people of expertise to work together sharing common goals — to make something like that work.”
In the meantime, he said, “resource management agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Department of [the] Interior and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are going out on their own and partnering when they can to deal with the issue of climate services in the context of impact and responses.”
Armstrong added, “I hope we can have better coordination very soon that will allow better, more effective joint goal sharing and goal setting.”
CLIMATE PARTNERSHIP
NOAA proposes to lead such a service and establish a national climate services partnership across federal agencies — NASA, the Department of the Interior’s USGS and Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation and many others.
Federal representatives would collaborate with universities; federal, state and local science and management agencies; nongovernmental organizations; and the private sector.
“The idea of a climate service goes back 20 or 30 years,” Chet Koblinsky, director of NOAA’s Climate Program Office, told America.gov.
Discussions in the 1970s led to legislation that created a National Climate Program Office at NOAA, he said. “The rudiments of that legislation are very much what you might have for a climate service — monitoring, prediction, providing decision tools — but a climate service never got traction in NOAA.”
Talk about similar services continued in Geneva in 1979, during the first World Climate Conference, sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization and attended by scientists from a range of disciplines.
By 1999, NOAA had a plan for a National Climate Service, Koblinsky said, but the incoming Bush administration was more focused on the third assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“What’s new now,” Koblinsky said, “is that there’s more certainty about climate change, more sophistication among people who know they’re vulnerable to a changing and variable climate,” and climate science and engagement with information users has improved.
GOING GLOBAL
In 2000, NOAA invested $42 million in Columbia University’s International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate and Society to support its climate research. The idea was to minimize the impact of major climate fluctuations like El Niño and drought on public health, agriculture, environment and energy and water resources.
“The IRI has been very successful,” Koblinsky said. “There’s a lot of interest in the international community about how communities of decision makers all over the world get access to climate knowledge and learn to use it. That’s the fundamental driver behind the World Climate Conference-3.”
The third World Climate Conference, to be held August 31 to September 4 in Geneva, will focus on climate change, climate prediction and information services.
“The international challenge will be to coordinate climate information, especially for countries that don’t have the capability to produce information, and link them into [information being produced elsewhere] so they can take advantage of it within their own national [meteorology] centers or agencies,” Koblinsky said. “I think that’s where the climate conference will come into play.”
Koblinksy said NOAA has a memorandum of understanding with India to work in the area of climate information.
“They’re very interested in the concept of developing better prediction and observing systems,” he said, “then translating them into benefits for society.”
More information about a National Climate Service is available at the NOAA Web site.
More information about the World Climate Conference-3 is available at the World Meteorological Organization’s Web site.
See also:
• “Drought Information System Offers Early Warning, Knowledge,”
• “Knowledge Centers Could Help Regions Cope with Climate Change,” and
