Include the existing NOAA/NWS/NCEP Climate Prediction Center in the framework of the Climate Service. CPC is already a well-known provider of science-based climate information, predictions and outlooks with an established set of products, an established set of customers, and an established set of linkages to other government organizations and the academic research community.

The oddity that CPC has not been included in the plan for the National Climate Service has been noted by many, including the recent external review of NCEP conducted by UCAR. Including CPC in the Climate Service would serve to help jump start the Service. It would also help to exploit the weather-climate linkage both because CPC is part of the National Weather Service and because CPC has traditionally focused on intraseasonal to interannual climate variability. There is an emerging consensus in the research community that global climate change will manifest itself through changes in climate variability at these intermediate time scales, which means the Climate Service must concern itself with less-than-decadal climate as well as the longer term. Finally, it would provide a natural linkage between the Climate Service and the academic research community that is already engaged with CPC.