Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

A Federal Climate Service Is Created to Provide Data

WASHINGTON — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will create a new climate change office to gather and provide data to governments, industry and academia as part of a broad federal effort to prepare for long-term changes to the planet, officials said Monday.

The new unit, to be known as the NOAA Climate Service, will assemble the roughly 550 scientists and analysts already working on the issue at the agency into a cohesive group under a single leader.

The climate service is designed to be analogous to the National Weather Service, also part of NOAA, which celebrates its 140th birthday this month. Officials said they hoped the reorganization would shore up the profile of government climate science and perhaps drive the creation of new businesses like those that repackage and sell weather and census data.

“By providing critical planning information that our businesses and our communities need, NOAA Climate Service will help tackle head-on the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, whose department oversees the atmospheric agency, said in a statement. “In the process, we’ll discover new technologies, build new businesses and create new jobs.”

The agency has also created a Web site, www.climate.gov, to make it easier for people to find government climate change data and analysis.

Jane Lubchenco, administrator of NOAA, said there was a growing demand for timely information from the government about variations in the global climate.

“As the realities of climate change become more obvious to more people, farmers, businesses, government agencies and public health officials are going to be turning to us for credible, useful and relevant information,” Dr. Lubchenco said in an interview

She said that planning for the new unit was not related to recent challenges to the credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations research unit that has been accused of inaccurate statements on how climate change could affect glaciers and rain forests.

Dr. Lubchenco said her agency was committed to sharing all the information it gathered, including raw data and analytical reports, another area in which the United Nations panel has drawn some criticism.

“We want to help build confidence in the science of climate change and give people an understanding of what is well established, as well as areas where there is more work to be done,” she said.

Because the creation of the climate service involves shuffling money within the Commerce Department, approval will be required from Congressional appropriations committees.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: A Federal Climate Service Is Created to Provide Data. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT