The Program supports decision makers by providing information to improve management of the sectors and geographic areas that are sensitive to impacts from weather and climate. Management issues include annual losses from droughts and floods, heat and cold waves, the positive and negative impacts of El Niño and La Niña events, sea level rise, and other high impact climate events. The information CSD provides includes observations, monitoring, analysis, modeling, forecasts, assessments, supporting datasets, and stakeholder driven research and applications.

The Program is addressing an increased demand for traditional climate services such as data and forecast dissemination and customer support, as well as identifying and satisfying new requirements for information on: long term climate trends; linkages between climate variability, climate change and weather extremes; assessments of vulnerability; and decision support in sectors such as drought and water management, fire, emergency preparedness, health, transportation, energy, coastal, urban, and ecosystem management.

Demand for increased services is met through research of decision maker needs, prototype product development, transition of research products into operations, and operational delivery and support. The CSD Program links producers and users of climate information, allowing decision maker-inspired creation of new knowledge, processes, tools, and products to improve planning, risk management, resource allocation, impacts assessment, adaptation, mitigation, early warning, and operational response in sectors sensitive to climate variability and change.

The Program relies heavily on NOAA's extensive U.S. infrastructure with more than 150 offices at the national, regional, and local levels contributing. The program also leverages partners at the international, national, regional, state, and local levels, as well as academia.