NWS Regional and Local Climate Services: Past 20 Years, Present, and Future

Abstract

Abstract The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) has been providing national, regional, and local climate services for more than 20 years. The NWS climate services building blocks consist of service provision infrastructure, partnership and outreach, discovery of user needs and requirements, and service delivery at national, regional, local, and tribal levels. To improve services, the NWS climate services program accelerated user engagement through customer surveys, workshops, and collaborations. Since 2002, the annual Climate Prediction Applications Science Workshop has developed a community of climate information producers and users through sharing of climate science applications, decision support tools, and effective communication practices. Although NWS had been producing operational climate monitoring and prediction products for several decades, the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 (U.S. Public Law 115-25) specifically mandated that NWS deliver services at subseasonal to seasonal time scales, including periods from two weeks to two years. Looking ahead, both the Department of Commerce (DOC) and NOAA have included climate services in their new 2022–26 strategic plans, including DOC’s goal to address the climate crisis through mitigation, adaptation, and resilience efforts and NOAA’s initiatives to build a Climate Ready Nation (CRN). The NWS Climate Services Program supports these strategic goals and CRN initiatives through integrating climate information into Impact-based Decision Support Services, the most critical element for implementation of the NWS strategy for a Weather-Ready Nation. This includes application of state-of-the-art climate monitoring and prediction products to the most societally relevant impacts while empowering regional and local climate delivery of enhanced services.