About NOAA Climate.gov

Mission

The NOAA Climate.gov web portal provides science and services for a climate-smart nation. We offer a public-friendly point of entry to NOAA’s and our partners’ diverse portfolios of climate data and information. Our goals are to promote public understanding of climate science to make our data products and services easy to access and use for decision-making, to provide climate-related support to the private sector and the Nation’s economy, and to provide quick access to data and information for individuals with very specific questions.

Each of the tabs on the main page is designed to meet the needs and interests of four groups:

  1. ClimateWatch Magazine is a popular-style magazine for the science-interested public covering topics in climate science, adaptation, and mitigation. Learn more…
  2. Data & Services is a gateway for scientists, resource managers, businesses and other interested members of the public who want to find and use climate data. Learn more…
  3. Understanding Climate is designed for policy leaders, decision makers, and resource managers who want authoritative, peer-reviewed climate science information to help them understand and manage climate-related risks and opportunities.  Learn more…
  4. Education offers learning activities and curriculum materials, multi-media resources, and professional development opportunities for formal and informal educators who want to incorporate climate science into their work.  Learn more…

Staff

Executive Board:
Thomas Karl (NESDIS/NCDC), Rick Rosen (OAR/CPO), Margaret Davidson (NOS/OCRM), Wayne Higgins (NWS/CPC), Eileen Shea (NESDIS/NCDC), and Ko Barrett (OAR/CPO).

Governance Team:
David Herring (OAR/CPO), program manager
James Boyd (NOS/CSC), project manager
Mike Halpert (NWS/CPC), project manager
Neal Lott (NESDIS/NCDC), project manager

IT System Engineering:
Jon Burroughs (NESDIS/NCDC), team leader
Charlie Roberts (NESDIS/NCDC), programmer
Jack Roche (NOS/CSC), IT requirements coordinator
Rich Baldwin (NESDIS/NCDC), GIS specialist
Glen Reid (NESDIS/NCDC), programmer
Mark Phillips (UNC-Asheville), programmer
Kristin Chader-Bostick (NOS/CSC), web programmer

ClimateWatch Magazine:
Rebecca Lindsey (OAR/CPO), managing editor & senior science writer
Ned Gardiner (OAR/CPO), data visualizations coordinator and video director
Hunter Allen (OAR/CPO), GIS and data visualization specialist
Richard A. Rivera (OAR/CPO), graphic artist and designer
Caitlyn Kennedy (OAR/CPO), science writer
Brian Kahn (OAR/CPO), science writer

ClimateWatch contributors:
Michon Scott (NSIDC), LuAnn Dahlman (OAR/CPO), Katy Human (OAR/ESRL), Barb Deluisi (OAR/ESRL), Brady Phillips (Office of Communications), Katy Vincent (NESDIS/NCDC), Susan Osborne (NESDIC/NCDC), Zack Guido (Climate Assessment for the Southwest), Dan Pisut (NESDIC/EVL), Kurt Mann (OAR/CPO)

Data & Services:
Sam McCown (NESDIS/NCDC), team leader
Viviane Silva (NWS/CSD), Dashboard group leader
Sudhir Shrestha (NWS/CPC), Interoperability group leader
Gabe Sataloff (NOS/CSC), Metadata group leader

Data & Services contributors:
Steve Ansari (NESDIS/NCDC), Matt Austin (NOAA WOC), Dave Eslinger (NOS/CSC), Christina Lief (NESDIS/NCDC), Jason Marshall (NOS/CSC), Kevin O’Brien (OAR/PMEL), and Jebb Stewart (OAR/ESRL)

Understanding Climate:
David Herring (OAR/CPO), team leader
Brian Kahn (OAR/CPO), co-lead
Tamara Houston (NESDIS/NCDC), contributing writer & editor
Lindy Betzhold (NOS/CSC), contributing writer & editor
Ned Gardiner (OAR/CPO), data visualizations coordinator & video director

Understanding Climate contributors:
Roger Griffis (NMFS) and Caitlyn Kennedy (OAR/CPO)

Education:
Frank Niepold (OAR/CPO), team leader
LuAnn Dahlman (OAR/CPO), product development
Peg Steffen (NOS/CED), professional development & product development
Bruce Moravchik (NOS/CED), professional development & product development
John Baek (HQ/OEd), monitoring and evaluation

Education contributors:
Tamara Shapiro Ledley (TERC), Marian Grogan (TERC), Elisabeth Sylvan (TERC), Susan Buhr (CIRES, University of Colorado, Boulder), Anne Gold (CIRES, University of Colorado, Boulder), Susan Lynds, (CIRES, University of Colorado, Boulder), Cathy Manduca (SERC, Carleton College), and Sean Fox (SERC, Carleton College).

Background

The Climate.gov project began as a rapid prototyping collaboration among staff from four NOAA offices: the Climate Program Office, the National Climatic Data Center, the Coastal Services Center, and the Climate Prediction Center.  A prototype  was first published in February 2010 so we could gather feedback to help us develop and evolve Climate.gov in user-driven ways.

Our first round of evaluations is complete, and we have begun transitioning to an operational status, which we expect to complete in 2012.  NOAA Climate.gov will undergo many changes this year that are visible and invisible to the public.  Here’s a brief summary of some of what’s coming:

  • a complete redesign of the user interface to improve our page designs and to simplify navigation throughout Climate.gov.
  • renamed sections for easier audience recognition: ClimateWatch Magazine will become “News & Features”; Data & Services will become “Data”; Understanding Climate will become “Decision Support”; and Education will become “Teaching Climate.”
  • an expanded scope and enhanced functionality.  For example, we’re adding a new “Climate Conditions” section to provide routinely updated maps and data trends that give a public-friendly digest of recent, current, and near-future climate conditions.
  • a new host server and content management system to improve and expedite our ability to publish and manage Climate.gov’s contents.

Particular emphasis through 2012 and beyond will be on evolving the design and functionality of the “Data” section and the Climate Conditions section.  Our aim is to expand and improve users’ ability to locate, preview, interact with, analyze, and access climate data from all across NOAA’s and its partners’ data centers.  We will also begin suggesting ways in which the public can use our data products and services to help them understand and manage climate-related risks and opportunities they face in their regions and in their professions. 

While we have ambitious plans for Climate.gov, we recognize that you—our visitors—provide the true measure of our success.  We hope you’re able to find and use what you came seeking.  If so, or if not, we would like to hear about it.  You can write to the relevant section team leaders at the addresses below to ask questions, make recommendations, or to let them know what you think:

    

Science Panel

The Climate.gov Science Panel is comprised of senior climate scientists & experts from across NOAA and academic institutions and climate science organizations outside of NOAA. The Science Panel provides a good representation of a wide range of relevant climate science disciplines. The Science Panel provides guidance, recommendations and editorial feedback in the following ways:
  • Recommends additions and adjustments to the scope and functionality of Climate.gov;
  • Engages on as-needed basis in response to climate-related current events for public interpretation;
  • Identifies significant forthcoming climate-related journal articles that are likely to be of interest to the public, thus helping to set the Portal’s editorial priorities;
  • Advises Climate.gov managers and editors regarding presentation of NOAA’s and partners’ climate science information;
  • Reviews / approves articles, images, presentations, videos and captions prior to publication, as needed.
  • Helps answer reader-submitted questions, or NOAA outreach personnel questions, as needed.

Data Panel

The Climate.gov Data Panel is comprised of senior data managers at major Earth system science and climate science data archive centers, or their delegates, plus some at-large members from academia and other sectors. The Data Panel provides guidance, recommendations and feedback in the following ways:
  • Helping to establish a transparent climate data review process for Climate.gov, to include refinement of metadata and data quality criteria.
  • Recommends additions and adjustments for improving data discoverability, accessibility, interoperability, interpretation, and application.
  • Reviews & discusses data sets proposed for inclusion in the Portal, and to recommend those which should be highlighted as good climatological baseline datasets.
  • Helps resolve questions pertaining to which are the “best available” data products of a given parameter for default display in the Portal’s more prominent interfaces section, such as the Dashboard.

NOAA Climate.gov Editorial Policies and Procedures

Everything Climate.gov publishes is reviewed and approved by relevant subject experts prior to publication.  Each of the Portal’s four sections targets different segments of the public and serves different objectives and so each section operates under different editorial policies and procedures, which are summarized below.

ClimateWatch Magazine

ClimateWatch Magazine publishes original work as well as submissions from partner agencies and organizations. The magazine is written and designed to inform, inspire, educate, and entertain the science-interested public on topics in climate science, adaptation, and mitigation.

The magazine’s content is based on the best available science, and it is produced in consultation with and reviewed by one or more scientific subject matter experts prior to publication. When necessary to ensure accuracy and completeness, or to resolve conflicting opinions among reviewers, authors, and/or editors, ClimateWatch solicits additional reviews from Climate.gov’s Science Panel members or other subject matter experts whom they recommend.

For submissions from other agencies or organizations, ClimateWatch verifies that a similarly rigorous editorial procedure was applied. If the contributor’s review process is adequate, an article or other content does not undergo additional subject matter expert review prior to publication on ClimateWatch. If the editorial procedures of the submitted article did not include a rigorous scientific review, the managing editor identifies an appropriate expert(s) to conduct a review prior to publication on ClimateWatch.

If necessary, submitters may be asked to revise their articles, have them re-reviewed by their sources, and resubmit them. ClimateWatch does not make any revisions to submitted articles without the approval of contributors and, when necessary, their original subject matter expert reviewers.

For more information, please contact the ClimateWatch Magazine editors. climate-climatewatchmagazine@noaa.gov

Data & Services

The Climate.gov Portal’s Data & Services section contains more than 280 descriptions of datasets and services spanning a wide range of climate-related subjects.  This collection was assembled in an effort to add value by simplifying and enhancing the discoverability, accessibility, and utility of the data.  This section aims to serve researchers, scientists, resource managers, business personnel, and other citizens who want to find and use climate data. 

Only those data products and services that comply with Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and/or International Standards Organization (ISO-9001) metadata standards are accessible through Climate.gov.  FGDC metadata is a long-standing federal requirement that was adopted by Climate.gov to allow distributed datasets and products to be accessible and searchable from a central location.  We have built upon this standard to ensure that the key fields in the metadata record are populated with required information. “Widening the circle of inclusion” will be an ongoing effort.  Over time we expect to make all of NOAA's climate datasets available via the NCS Portal, but anyone interested in datasets that are not accessible via Climate.gov are encouraged to visit one or more of the following NOAA’s data centers and various centers of data:

For more information, please contact the Data & Services section editors. climate-dataandservices@noaa.gov

Understanding Climate

The Climate.gov Understanding Climate section contains descriptions of authoritative, peer-reviewed reports, documents, and presentations about a wide range of climate science subjects—including climate change, climate variability, extreme events, adaptation, and mitigation.  This section’s purpose is to serve policy leaders, decision makers, resource managers, and citizens who seek authoritative climate science information to help them understand and manage their climate-related risks and opportunities.

The peer review processes for the synthesis and assessment reports available in this section are conducted by the relevant publishing agency or organization identified.  (For example, editorial review of the “America’s Climate Choices” series of reports was conducted by the U.S. National Academy of Science.)  While the editorial processes for these information resources happens “upstream” of Climate.gov, the Understanding Climate editors vet these resources carefully and include only those that we consider to be scientifically accurate, credible, and that maintain established standards of scientific scholarship (i.e., transparent editorial processes conducted by credible subject matter experts and traceable citations to relevant peer-reviewed literature). 

Original content developed and published for the Understanding Climate section follows the same editorial process established for the ClimateWatch magazine.  In short, all content is peer reviewed by relevant subject matter experts prior to publication.

Education

The Education section provides learning activities and curriculum materials, multimedia resources, and professional development opportunities for formal and informal educators who want to incorporate climate science into their work.  The Education section is dovetailing its content review process and procedures with those of Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (or CLEAN, at cleanet.org) project.  CLEAN is 3-year National Science Data Library (NSDL) Pathway project, begun in 2010 and funded by the National Science Foundation, established to build a small digital collection of teaching resources that are aligned with the Essential Principles of Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness.  A summary of the review process is given below; a detailed description of the CLEAN Review Process is available here. 

In summary, the CLEAN review team consists of experienced middle school and high school teachers and college-level instructors as well as PhD-level scientists of relevant fields (climate and energy science, social sciences, etc.) and other climate literacy practitioners.  The CLEAN review process was informed by review guidelines and criteria from other collections, such as the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), the Science Education Research Center (SERC) Guidelines, the Merlot criteria, and the Climate Change Collection. The CLEAN review criteria were tested and refined in multiple test review rounds and through review comparisons among different reviewers.

At the core of the CLEAN review is a set of review questions to assess educational materials in three categories: (1) scientific accuracy, (2) pedagogic effectiveness, and (3) technical quality /ease of use.  Reviewers answer questions about each resource, give an overall rating for each of the three categories mentioned above, and note any strengths and concerns.  An overall qualitative recommendation (low, medium, or high priority) decides which path a resource takes through the review process.

All teaching resources that pass through the CLEAN review process are subsequently presented to a panel of four reviewers (educators and scientists) during a review camp.  This team of four specialists discusses each resource, and the reviewers’ notes from the previous review round, and makes the final decision about whether to include a resource in the CLEAN collection. All comments of the reviewers are compiled into annotations (notes to the user) on the science, the pedagogy, and the usability of a teaching activity.

NOAA Climate.gov Portal Team Structure

Recognizing that not everyone in the public has the same interests and needs for climate data and information, we designed NOAA Climate.gov to serve four different objectives for four segments of the public:

  1. ClimateWatch Magazine for the science-interested public covering topics in climate science, adaptation, and mitigation.
  2. Data & Services for scientists, resource managers, businesses and other interested members of the public who want to find and use climate data.
  3. Understanding Climate for policy leaders, decision makers, and resource managers who want authoritative, peer-reviewed climate science information to help them understand and manage climate-related risks and opportunities.
  4. Education for formal and informal educators who want to incorporate climate science into their work.

In taking this approach, we assembled our data, information resources, and expertise from across our distributed climate science and services community (including NOAA and its partners) into a well integrated online point-of-access for the four segments of the public listed above.  Our needs for a balanced and scalable approach drove the design of our Climate.gov organization structure (illustrated below).

Figure 1 – NOAA Climate.gov Organization Chart

NOAA Climate.gov Organization Chart

Behind each tab section of the portal is a cross-agency virtual team that plans and executes the day-to-day development and editorial processes of their respective sections. These teams are coordinated by an overarching Governance Team, comprised of the Climate.gov Program Manager and three Project Managers.  The Governance Team establishes the priorities, scope, and objectives of Climate.gov; manages and executes the portal’s annual budget; convenes and coordinates the external review bodies (the Data Review Board, the Science Panel, and the External Evaluator); and reports quarterly to the Executive Board.

The Executive Board is comprised of Senior Executive Staff from within the Climate Program Office (OAR/CPO), the National Climatic Data Center (NESDIS/NCDC), the Coastal Services Center (NOS/OCRM), and the Climate Prediction Center (NWS/CPC).  This Board ensures Climate.gov is appropriately balanced in its overall presentation of NOAA’s and its partners’ climate science information and data products.  The Executive Board recommends additions and adjustments to the priorities and scope of Climate.gov, as needed.