In the US, weather products and services are provided from a public-private enterprise of around $5B of public money and around a $50B private weather industry. This enterprise provides thousands of private jobs and more than repays, via taxes, the government for its public investment in providing 300 million Americans and worldwide customers with the worlds best weather services. This weather enterprise could be easily expanded and improved with the creation of climate variability and change products and services that would be able to serve all Americans and the World using a Climate Service Public-Private Partnership.  Improving on the existing US Weather Enterprise  with climate products and services will also ensure Economic growth and National security without forming another publicly funded burden for our country. The potential market for climate products and services will be many times the size of the existing weather enterprise. 

Why the contribution is important

To ensure a cost-effective nationwide climate service in the US, public and private organizations must work together to ultimately provide value-added climate information products and services to paying customers, thereby providing economic growth and associated national security. 

Current rating

3.75
Average score : 3.7
Based on : 4 votes
science1
Posted by science1 June 21, 2010 at 05:22PM
Right on! Why is it that NOAA seems to have been dragging its feet and not playing a real leadership role from the start?!
fmanheim
Posted by fmanheim June 22, 2010 at 12:28AM
Clarification of the kind of "climate services" that could be provided by the private partnership would be useful
pjrobinson
Posted by pjrobinson June 23, 2010 at 06:20AM
Many private sector "weather" information providers regularly provide "climate" information to clients - discussing long term trends, variability, extremes etc. Historically the distinction seems to have been between weather service as meeting repeatable and routine needs (building a business) and climate service as being one-off client requests (limited reliable business opportunities). That is no longer the case. The weather enterprise is already a weather-climate enterprise. Maybe we need a name change (and discussion of whether it needs a bureaucratic home), we don't need another organization.

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