Deborah Zabarenko, PlanetArk 9 Feb 10;
WASHINGTON - A proposed new U.S. NOAA Climate Service is meant to help businesses adapt to the impact of climate change, and to spur development of new technologies to cope with it, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Monday.
"Even with our best efforts, we know that some degree of climate change is inevitable and American citizens and businesses, and American governments ... must be able to rise to environmental and economic challenges that lie ahead," Locke told reporters in announcing the move.
He said new private second industries could develop from information generated by the new service, just as industries based on data from the National Weather Service and U.S. Census Bureau have done.
In addition to dealing with climate change, Locke said, "In the process, we'll discover new technologies, build new businesses and create new jobs."
The new service -- its Web site is www.climate.gov -- means a reorganization at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is part of the Commerce Department and includes the National Weather Service.
NOAA already offers data to businesses ranging from agriculture and energy to fisheries and transportation, as well as to the billion-dollar weather-forecasting industry, Locke said. But information about climate change is scattered across the agency.
Locke said concentrating NOAA's expertise and information on climate change in one place would help these industries and others including renewable energy like wind power, infrastructure and architecture planning and disease prevention and control.
NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said the new service would offer information to help plan for sea level rise, coastal erosion, longer growing seasons, increases in heavy downpours and other severe weather events -- all predicted consequences of climate change.
The Commerce Department is working with Congress, which must approve the transfer of existing funds to the new service; Locke said he hoped it would be operating by the start of the 2011 fiscal year.
U.S. legislation aimed at curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change was narrowly approved by the House of Representatives last year; Senators John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, are working on a Senate measure.
The NOAA announcement brought quick praise from Sierra Club President Carl Pope: "As polluters and their allies continue to try and muddy the waters around climate science, the Climate Service will provide easy, direct access to the valuable scientific research undertaken by government scientists and others."
US government plans new climate service
Yahoo News 8 Feb 10;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama's administration announced plans Monday for a new office handling climate change, aiming to help businesses chart future plans as the nation shifts to a greener economy.
The first practical effect was the creation of a website, www.climate.gov, which came online Monday and brings together government resources on climate change for business, scholars and the general public.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said that the new Climate Service would help businesses on subjects such as wind power by providing data on wind patterns which they would need to expand.
"The bottom line is this -- the better climate information that alternative energy companies have, the more profitable they can be, the more jobs they can create and the more they can actually meet the energy demands of our country and indeed the world," he told reporters.
Locke compared the initiative to the National Weather Service, which he said had spurred a private industry of forecasters who benefit from the government data.
The Climate Service would bring together resources now spread throughout the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency that falls under the Commerce Department. It will also have six regional offices across the country.
Locke said he expected that the Climate Service would be running before the start of the 2011 fiscal year. He said the administration would first consult with Congress, although he did not believe any new legislation was needed.
The Climate Servi
ce marks the latest effort by the Obama administration to act on climate change despite an uncertain political terrain.
The House of Representatives last year approved a landmark plan to impose the first US nationwide caps on emissions of carbon dioxide, which scientists say is causing a dangerous heating of the planet.
But the legislation is stalled in the Senate, where Obama's Democratic Party last month lost a seat to a critic of the climate bill.
New federal climate change agency forming
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press 8 Feb 10;
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Monday proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.
Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA's National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.
"Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat," Locke said Monday at a news conference.
Lubchenco added, "Climate change is real, it's happening now." She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials.
NOAA recently reported that the decade of 2000-2009 was the warmest on record worldwide; the previous warmest decade was the 1990s. Most atmospheric scientists believe that warming is largely due to human actions, adding gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
Researchers and leaders from around the world met last month in Denmark to discuss ways to reduce climate-warming emissions, and a follow-up session is planned for later this year in Mexico.
"More and more people are asking for more and more information about climate and how it's going to affect them," Lubchenco explained. So officials decided to combine climate operations into a single unit.
Portions of the Weather Service that have been studying climate, as well as offices from some other NOAA agencies, will be transferred to the new NOAA Climate Service.
The new agency will initially be led by Thomas Karl, director of the current National Climatic Data Center. The Climate Service will be headquartered in Washington and will have six regional directors across the country.
Lubchenco also announced a new NOAA climate portal on the Internet to collect a vast array of climatic data from NOAA and other sources. It will be "one-stop shopping into a world of climate information," she said.
Creation of the Climate Service requires a series of steps, including congressional committee approval. But if all goes well, it should be finished by the end of the year, officials said.
In recent years, a widespread private weather forecasting industry has grown up around the National Weather Service, and Lubchenco said she anticipates growth of private climate-related business around the new agency.
While most people notice the weather from day to day or week to week, climate looks at both the averages and extremes of weather over longer periods of time. And understanding both weather and climate, and their changes, are vital to much of the world's economic activity ranging from farming to travel to energy use and production and even food shipments and disease prevention.
Atmospheric scientists have long joked that climate is what you expect and weather is what you get. But greenhouse warming is changing what can be expected from climate, and researchers are seeking to understand and anticipate the impacts of that change.
