Getting in on the ground floor of the U.S. Climate Service

By hrynyshyn on June 4, 2010.

Hard as it is for someone who isn't familiar with intricacies of U.S. government-run climate science to believe, there is no climatology analog of the the immigration or revenue services, something responsible for overseeing the big picture. Sure, there's NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but that does a lot of things other than measure and model the climate. There's NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, but it's mostly a number-crunching lab, and not really set up to engage the public. That's about to change, and the folks tasked with overseeing the creation of the new Climate Service are looking for advice.

Beginning on Monday, June 14th, the independent, nonprofit National Academy of Public Administration will host a Dialogue on a NOAA Climate Service. This Dialogue is part of a study requested by Congress of organizational options for a Climate Service in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This web-based conversation will engage individuals from across the nation to discuss and recommend ideas, tools, and approaches for how a NOAA Climate Service can best engage stakeholders over time to meet their needs for climate information and services
For questions about the Dialogue, please contact the National Academy of Public Administration at climatedialogue@napawash.org.

The website for this project has nothing more than the above paragraph and an opportunity join a mailing list. Someone put me a related mailing list with a bit more info though, and in the interests of spreading the word about this worthwhile endeavor:

Leverage your social media tools by placing an event announcement on your or blog, Facebook page or on your Twitter account. Follow us on Twitter at @NAPAclimatedlg, and become a fan on the "Dialogue on a Climate Service" Facebook page to receive event reminders and updates. To make it easy, we've even counted the characters for you.

Please post to Twitter:

The Climate Service Dialogue starts on June 14th! Learn more @ www.NAPAclimatedialogue.org, follow @NAPAclimatedlg, pls RT!

This might actually induce me to follow a Twitter feed (though I remain skeptical).

Also, I point out that we are all "stakeholders."

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