The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Services Portal: A New Centralized Resource for Distributed Climate Information

摘要

With the rapid rise in the development of Webtechnologies and climate services across NOAA, therehas been an increasing need for greater collaborationregarding NOAA's online climate services. The driversinclude the need to enhance NOAA's Web presence inresponse to customer requirements, emerging needsfor improved decision-making capabilities across allsectors of society facing impacts from climate variabilityand change, and the importance of leveraging climatedata and services to support research and publiceducation.To address these needs, NOAA (during fiscal year2009) embarked upon an ambitious program to developa NOAA Climate Services Portal (NCS Portal). FourNOAA offices are leading the effort: 1) the NOAAClimate Program Office (CPO), 2) the National OceanService's Coastal Services Center (CSC), 3) theNational Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center(CPC), and 4) the National Environmental Satellite,Data, and Information Service's (NESDIS) NationalClimatic Data Center (NCDC). Other offices andprograms are also contributing in many ways to theeffort. This website only scratchesthe surface of the many climate services across NOAA,but this effort, via direct user engagement, willgradually expand the scope and breadth of the NCSPortal to greatly enhance the accessibility andusefulness of NOAA's climate data and services.