NOAA and the National Climate Service (NCS) should increase capacity in NOAA climate literacy.  Other federal, state, and local agencies that engage with NOAA for various regulatory and environmental consultation processes should be able to use, at all levels of NOAA, its expertise and knowledge on climate data, services, and products.  Unfortunately, except for NOAA scientists working within specific climate research centers (e.g., National Climatic Data Center, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA Fisheries Science Centers, NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research laboratories), most NOAA program staff do not have adequate training in basic climate science, climate change impacts on natural resources their program manages, or what climate resources NOAA has developed that might assist NOAA partners and the public.

Climate and climate change information is needed by all federal, state, and local agencies and the public at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales to inform effective decision-making.  While agency-wide climate data centers and data portals have their places, many times NOAA partners need to communicate directly with NOAA staff regarding the climate-related issues associated with specific regulatory and environmental programs that they administer.  Currently, most NOAA staff are unprepared to respond to climate change concerns articulated by their partners (or, in some cases both NOAA and the NOAA partners may be unaware of the climate risks associated with their programs).  NOAA and NCS should develop climate literacy training for all NOAA programs and regions, with appropriate emphasis on the human and environmental resources for each of the NOAA programs and regions.  

In addition, NOAA and the NCS should develop climate liaisons for all NOAA line offices (e.g., NOAA Fisheries, National Ocean Service, National Weather Service) that would coordinate with the NCS regional centers and the program offices within their respective line offices throughout the region.  They would communicate the status of new and ongoing climate science, monitoring, and climate products (e.g., local projections for sea level rise and coastal inundation, downscaled temperature and drought models, affects on living marine resources, fisheries, and coastal ecosystems, climate change adaptation science and application projects) developed within NOAA programs and elsewhere.  The liaisons would be best positioned to represent their line office’s climate science and climate service needs to the NCS.  The liaisons would enable the NCS to more effectively plan and respond to the climate science and service needs of NOAA and its stakeholders, and in nearly all cases would help improve the geographic coverage of NCS affiliates, providing a more local NCS gateway to stakeholders.

An important motivation for local, state, and federal agencies and the public in developing effective climate change mitigation and adaptation response is context of the risk.  Climate change risks must be articulated at local scales and in the context of how it may affect a resource important to a specific agency or the public.  NCS liaisons and climate literacy efforts can help bring this information to the partners that NOAA programs engage each and every day, and help bring climate data and services needs expressed by its partners and the public back to appropriate NOAA climate research and service offices.