Enhance Climate Services to Help Communities, Businesses, and Governments Understand and Adapt to Climate-Related Risks

In the recent past, changes in climate can be seen in an increased average global temperature, melting of sea ice, rising sea levels, and increasing ocean acidification. Seasonal precipitation patterns have changed and weather-related events have increased in intensity and even frequency. Whether these changes are part of a natural cycle of climate variability or indicative of permanent change is still a matter of scientific debate; however, the impacts are vast, affecting all aspects of our ecosystems, society, and economy. Along our coastlines, changes in sea level rise could have an impact on housing and development, transportation, commerce, and the economy. In the Arctic, melting sea ice is already impacting natural habitats while providing opportunities for opening new sea routes for commerce and tourism. In many regions of the country, climate is impacting our water resources, including municipal water supplies and ecosystems. This goal supports the efforts of NOAA to deepen scientific understanding of climate, deliver climate services from global to local scales, and improve public knowledge of the impacts of a changing climate.

  • Measures of Success:  Reduced economic losses in areas such as agriculture, water, and energy as a result of impact-based climate services; improved preparation and response to weather-related events based on climate forecasts; better management of environmental resources based on climate forecasts

Objective:  Enhance NWS services to support development and delivery of NOAA climate services

Achieving this objective will require many of the strategies from other goals, along with the following:

      • - Impact Forecasts:  Create a seamless suite of forecasts to address regional-to-local needs and issues across multiple time and space scales working with NOAA and other partners
      • - Decision Support: 
        • - Engage local and regional users to better understand climate issues; respond by delivering expanded climate service portfolio with NOAA and public and private sector partners
        • - Enhance decision support through integration of social and economic factors, better communication of risk and uncertainty, and by using visualization, web, and other technologies
      • - Partnerships:  Strengthen local, state, and regional partnerships across various sectors; foster growth of an emerging climate service industry to serve diverse needs of America's economy

      Objective:  Improve and expand climate modeling for time scales from weeks and seasons to years

      Achieving this objective will require many of the science and technology strategies from other goals, along with the following:

        • - Research & Development: 
          • - Improve understanding of the linkages between weather and climate and enhance modeling and analysis capabilities to provide more reliable predictions of climate and extreme events on scales from weeks to  seasons and years
          • - Support a NOAA-wide research effort on the potential for routine decadal prediction
        • - Observations: Leverage NWS observing systems to contribute to a strong scientific foundation for adaptation and mitigation strategies and minimize gaps in our understanding of climate variability and change
        • Modeling & Prediction: 
          • - Improve the capability, with NOAA and partners, to simulate and predict climate on multiple time scales within an Earth system framework
          • Develop, with NOAA and partners, forecast-downscaling techniques that add value to climate forecasts at regional and local scales
          • - Improve forecast skill for weeks 2-4, in collaboration with the external research community, including generation of related data sets, multi-model ensemble prediction system, improved data assimilation, test beds, and model test facility
          • - Incorporate the effects of climate change in our Nation's precipitation frequency estimates.  Develop and implement techniques to update maximum precipitation estimates
        • - Transition of Research: Develop, in partnership with research community, common modeling and operating infrastructures and testbeds to facilitate scientific and technological development and  to accelerate the transition of research into operations