Climate forecasting and data are essential, but ultimately incomplete, parts of what a climate service should offer. Forecasting and database domains must be expanded to include dimensions that allow results and information to be used to enhance the advanced identification of vulnerable communities and climate impacts on these communities, and provide tools that enable these communities to adapt. For example, it is essential to understand the variability of climate impacts on diverse socioeconomic and racial/ethnic, age and gender groups within cities, and how these groups are affected by public and private responses through both planning for and responses to climatic events.

This indicates that the design of research and support functions for NOAA’s Climate Services initiative should be based on developing an understanding of how communities perceive and behave in relation to information about climate variability and change, and how people perceive the risks to their communities and to themselves. Interdisciplinary research and operational approaches could conceivably concentrate on specific processes, such as urbanization, which would be highly applicable to current population trends in both the United States as well as globally, rather than simply reiterating traditional concentrations, such as regional processes. This would enable the development of adaptation solutions toward climate variability and uncertainty within the context of stakeholder needs.

Expanding research and operations to include applied, natural, and social science data will help NOAA identify and demonstrate the utility and applicability of its existing climate products and would be a viable first step to meeting these needs. However, there is an equal need to work with stakeholders to guide the development of new data and products. This suggests that there needs to be an essential feedback loop to the design of a climate services program. A strong feedback loop will encourage NOAA and stakeholders to “learn as we do,” resulting in a framework that is both nimble and adaptable to what is learned over time.

A National Climate Service should therefore act as a resource center and decision- and policy support center for a variety of stakeholders and decision makers. Such a service will need to interpret data, climate predictions, and modeling applications in ways that are accessible and meaningful to a diverse set of users. These services could take the form of visualization tools, integrated modeling, risk analyses including tradeoffs and equity considerations, scenario planning, framing and communication experiments, etc. In each case, the analysis space would need to be grounded in information that supports specific stakeholder needs and policy responses.

Society must recognize and learn to adapt to climate variability and uncertainty through physical and behavioral transformations in current practices to achieve sustainability. Global climate change poses unresolved challenges to scientists, politicians, entrepreneurs, and citizens on how to anchor climate change action in contexts where the sources of emissions reside and the impacts of climate change are tangible. These tangible impacts include environmental, social, and economic outcomes that are intimately intertwined.

Progress in understanding the needs of policy- and decision-makers as well as behavioral responses to threats and consequences of climate events has lagged behind the progress in forecasting contributing significantly to this gap. There is a critical need to bridge the existing gaps between providers and owners of climate-related information and those who need them, as well as between research and operations as it relates to climate change. Forecasting that is defined in concert with recognition of the importance of translational services sitting between the climate information and the needs of decision and policy makers will help bridge this gap.

Focusing the emphasis of a National Climate Service on adaptation and specific processes would provide more useable data and tools, especially if stakeholders including but not limited to decision- and policy-makers are engaged in defining perceptions, behaviors, risks and needs. It will enable researchers, managers, and policy- and decision-makers to accurately identify impacts as well as recommend and implement far-reaching, integrated solution options.