III. Policy Levers to Expand Climate Services The following section analyzes three policy levers that could be used to create an expansive climate services model in the U.S. as a crucial step towards climate resilience. The policy options considered here are (1) a National Climate Services Agency housed in NOAA, (2) an expansion of the NOAA Regional Integrated Science Assessment (RISA) program, and (3) aid to states and local governments to increase capacity for producing and utilizing climate services in adaptation planning.
Policy Lever 1: A National Climate Service Summary: The current fragmented provisioning of climate services across various federal agencies fails to provide comprehensive and coherent climate related information to decision makers. A National Climate Service (NCS) housed in NOAA would help coordinate and facilitate adaptation planning, particularly at the regional and national levels. An NCS would also serve as a centralized source for climate service information, making it easier for stakeholders to access information needed to make informed decisions. Finally, an NCS would also be able to address equity issues that the current decentralized system cannot by incorporating socioeconomic data and by promoting the inclusion of these data when considering the impacts of climate change. An NCS alone, however, cannot meet all the nation’s needs for climate information and services. Other strategies are needed to create partnerships between local level actors, the academic community, and the private sector that can collectively address critical information and non-information gaps.
While varying capabilities for providing climate information exist across federal agencies, it is difficult for decision makers to know exactly where to turn for reliable information. One solution to this problem is to create a National Climate Service (NCS) within NOAA. This new agency would be tasked with identifying, producing, and delivering authoritative and timely information about climate change variations and trends, and their impact on built and natural systems and communities at the regional, national, and global scales. Critics of creating a new national climate service agency have argued that the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) already effectively acts as a centralized climate information hub. Established in 1989, USGCRP coordinates and integrates research from 13 agencies and departments across the federal government on changes in the global environment and their implications for society. Proponents of creating a new NCS agency, however, argue that USGCRP is not focused on operationalizing the research it produces. For climate services to be successful, they need to be usable and used by constituents. An NCS would do more to make climate information decision-oriented so that stakeholders with sensitivities to and needs for climate-related information could make use of data and products from various federal agencies.
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