Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
I blogged recently about the director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, Tom Karl, going up to Washington, D.C., last week to testify before a congressional subcommittee about federal funding for the handling of satellite data in relation to the study of the climate. I hinted that there was more to the story.
Now it’s confirmed. In a Monday morning report on WCQS, the radio station broke a big story – the Obama administration’s new head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco, plans to create a new National Climate Service, and plans to tap Karl to head up its creation.
A National Climate Service has been discussed extensively, but nothings been done until now. It would be modeled on the National Weather Service, which monitors our weather, but, as you could tell by its name, would focus on bigger changes to the global climate.
The is a major new commitment to tracking climate change. And an Asheville resident will have a direct connection to its creation. I don’t know the details on where the National Climate Service would be based, or wether there might be the potential for job creation here in Asheville, but I suppose anything is possible.
This is an important story. It will be interesting to see if anyone picks up on it.
The New York Times on March 10 wrote about a new report that maps out what a National Climate Service might look like:
The federal government’s best option to meet a burgeoning demand for “user-friendly” climate change information could be starting from scratch, suggests a much-anticipated report that will be released later today.
The analysis, by an independent scientific panel that advises the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, examines four very different blueprints for a “National Climate Service.” The idea is to create a central federal source of information on everything from projections of sea-level rise to maps of the nation’s best sites for wind and solar power.
But despite the endorsement of climate scientists and lawmakers from both political parties, precisely what a National Climate Service would look like has been an open question. Bush administration officials pushed to create a new division within NOAA but left office before any real plans took shape. President Obama’s pick to head the agency, Oregon State University marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco, has said she favors creating a National Climate Service but isn’t sure what it should look like (ClimateWire, Feb. 13).
Enter NOAA’s Science Advisory Board. Over the several months, the independent panel has worked to flesh out the climate service concept, based on four options sketched by researchers, government officials and industry representatives who met at a NOAA conference in Vail, Colo., last June.
The advisory board’s final report, scheduled to be released later today, doesn’t officially favor one approach. But it seems to lean toward creating a federally sponsored nonprofit corporation or a new “national climate service federation” of regional groups of “climate information providers,” which it says is likely to create a “stronger connection to users and the research community.”
Starting from the ground up would also create a “nimble, flexible” National Climate Service with a singular focus that can be hard to achieve in federal agencies with broader agendas, the report says. And the government already has several models for such an approach, including the Tennessee Valley Authority and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., which is administered by the National Science Foundation and run by a consortium of universities.
There are some drawbacks, the report notes, including questions of whether such a climate service would be able to participate in global efforts, like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or how “authoritative” its advice could seem to the general public.
Taking the opposite approach and carving a National Climate Service out of existing federal agencies has its own disadvantages, the report says, including the potential for inter-agency rivalries.
While NOAA’s National Weather Service is often cited as a model for a National Climate Service, NOAA “is not well-suited to the development of a unified climate services function,” the new report says, without serious efforts to increase communication between the agency’s weather and climate divisions.
This 2008 AP story has some interesting background:
Conrad C. Lautenbacher said Tuesday a climate service within his agency could combine data from the research and analysis work done by several agencies, as well as coordinate climate information for the government.
Lautenbacher is head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service, National Ocean Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and other activities.
Currently, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program integrates climate research by 13 government agencies. Lautenbacher said he felt it would make a more sense to have something that is a lot more organized, pulling together data from both U.S. agencies and other countries around the world.
Today everybody just cherry-picks the data that support their point of view, Lautenbacher said of the debate over climate change. “We need to deal with this in a scientific manner.”
Whether there is warming or not, no one doesn’t want solid, scientific information, Lautenbacher said. That, he added, could depoliticize the arguments.
The Bush Administration has been reluctant to subscribe to limits on carbon emissions that other countries have sought in an effort to combat global warming.
But Lautenbacher said the White House has signed off on “the idea” of a climate service, and he said he plans to seek funds to help organize it in the 2010 budget.
In NOAA, for example, the Climate Prediction Center that looks at long-term outlooks is part of the Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction, while data on climate is compiled by the National Climatic Data Center, a part of the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service.
The difference between weather and climate is basically one of time. Weather happens from day to day, while climate is the overall averages — and extremes — of weather over seasons and years.
Some have described the difference as “climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.”
A new Climate Service would not have any regulatory power, he stressed. It would provide data to other agencies for their use — for example to the Transportation Department, Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy.
And a National Climate Service would not take over climate research carried out by other agencies such as NASA, Environmental Protection Agency or U.S. Geological Survey, he said.
