Strategic Climate Objective: III Inform Mitigation & Adaptation Choices
As NOAA strives to meet the rapidly growing demands of Americans for more and more robust climate services—adapted for specific sectors, regions, states and locations—the agency's highest priority over the next two years is developing and delivering the climate mitigation and adaptation information, products, and services that stakeholders need, at appropriate time and space scales, for use in climate-related decision in their lives, businesses, and communities.
This Objective has three cross-cutting priorities:
- Assessing the needs and wants of decision-makers, as they relate to the four societal challenges (see below)
- Providing basic climate-related information in usable and routine formats for managers and decision-makers across the nations
- Identify and close the gaps in climate service risk and uncertainties, and facilitate more and more effective partnerships in support of adaptation and mitigation services.
The work of developing and delivering climate information, products and services is too big for any single agency or organization. Success in this Objective hinges on the effective use of interdependent partnerships:
- Stakeholders who rely on NOAA to provide the best available climate data and information. NOAA will leverage its own investments as well as the investments of other federal agencies and the academic community to utilize the best available climate science, and to characterize and advance effective climate services at sub-regional-scales.
- NOAA projects and external partners who are already providing climate services to stakeholders. For example, the coastal and community resilience will require the National Ocean Service and their networked partners with the states and academic community to help lead the way in terms of lessons learned and better adaptation and mitigation strategies.
- Collaborations between NOAA and external partners to evolve and enhance climate services for improved decision-making, which are most often felt at the local levels and drive the nation's coastal economies. This partnership capitalizes on the importance of climate services to all sectors and at all levels.
Over the next 5 years, NOAA's efforts to information America's mitigation and adaptation choices will focus on four societal challenges:
- climate impacts on water resources
- coasts and climate resilience to local sea level
- sustainability of marine ecosystems
- changes in the extremes of weather and climate
Objective Leads:
Paul Scholz,
Director
Management and Budget Division
NOAA Coastal Services Center
Eileen Shea,
Director
Climate Services and Monitoring Division
NOAA National Climatic Data Center