Integrated Climate Services for Effective Decision Making

1. NCDC and AASC in National Climate Service An Update Marjorie McGuirk National Partnership Liaison NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center American Association of State Climatologists Annual MeetingJuly 7-10, 2008Burlington, Vermont

2. Integrated Climate ServicesBackground Climate Services is “The timely production and delivery of useful climate data, information and knowledge to decision makers” (NRC 2001) • Government, state, private sector, academia climate service partnerships currently exists • loosely coupled but many gaps exist • A strategy is needed for a more comprehensive and integrated approach among the many climate service partners: • NOAA offices (NWS/CSD/CPC) • RCCs and State Climate Offices • Other Federal Agencies • Academia • Private Sector • International • Update 2008 – National Climate Services Strategic Planning • Analysis options November – February 2008 • Strategic Plan Vail June 2008 • Roundtable Discussion July and August 2008 • NCDC Re-organization – tentative-draft-non-official

3. Climate Services PartnershipsFederal, State, Academia, Private Sector • Current gaps in climate services • Attributions • Impacts • Spatial and Temporal Resolution of observations • Accuracy of Observing Systems • Complexity of multi-disciplinary issues • E.g., land use change & climate; confluence of heat waves, drought, poor dispersion/air quality • Current Examples of Synergy • RISAs: Research to Operation issues • RCCs: Year-to-year uncertainty in budget resources • Alliance for Earth Observations: GEO efforts • ESIP: Assistance with data management • NIDIS: An issue specific model to follow for partnerships • Update 2008 • IPCC and CCSP reports • Drought.gov webportal operational • Contract Mod RCC • Basic – Advanced – Supplemental • HCN-M underway • CRN almost complete

4. Climate Data Services-Observations • Climate Reference Network • Completing last of 114 stations by the end of September 2008 • Critical in-situ monitoring capability • Work beginning on the deployment of soil moisture/soil temperature sensors at all 114 sites stating in 2008 • Workshop held with stakeholders in Alaska in May 2008 to begin planning for the deployment of 29 stations in Alaska • The first deployment in Alaska is planned for 2008 at Sand Point. 4

5. NOAA & State Climate OfficesFormalizing the Partnership • Issue • NOAA is in the process of defining a ‘National Climate Services Program’ to include the RCCs & SCs • Thus, NOAA needs to associate with the appropriate designated State agent for climate services • Method • NOAA to work with partners in defining the roles of the State Climatologists: • Competency – rely on AASC certification • Official Designation - State appointment authority • e.g., letter from Governor’s Office or Legislative Body • Benefits • Formalizes the climate service partnership among AASC, State Government, & NOAA • Update 2008 • Paper-work on all SCO and ARSCOs available at AASC registration in 2008 • ARSCO encoded into contracts for HCN-M Existing Agreements

6. Also:122 WFOs15 WSOs13 RFCs~50 State Climatologists RISA’s NWS Regional HQ * Climate Services Division, * Climate Program Office, and * NOAA HQ Regional Climate Centers Climate Services PartnershipsThe Broad Community CIG International Research Institute WWA Cornell University University of Nebraska Desert Research Institute Illinois State Water Survey NOAA Climate Prediction Center,* NOAA National Climatic Data Center NOAA Climate Diagnostic Center UNC-Chapel Hill CAP CLIMAS CISA Louisiana State University ACCAP SECC IDEA 6

7. We could talk about Climate Services in terms of WHERE the NOAA offices are located….Location of NOAA offices in the continental USA, by line office. Symbols are size-scaled by number of employees.

8. NOAA “Partnerships” in Climate …or in terms of Budget Three Line Organizations Budget climate

9. Climate Services begins with the Customer

10. What do our customers want? NCDC Customer Profile

11. 5 million customers got data from NCDC in 2007

13. About half a million customers got large data orders from NCDC in 2006

14. NOAA Regional Climate CentersService Research, Education and Outreach • Conduct outreach to regional and local decision makers on the use of climate products. • Building design (snow loads, soil freezing), • Flood management, • Irrigation, • Pest management • Coastal erosion • Water management • Agriculture • Climate change • Energy • Environment • Risk management • Transportation • Natural hazards

15. NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center DO Director’s Office SSD GCAD CSMD RSAD Global Climate Applications Division Remote Sensing and Applications Division Climate Services and Monitoring Division Support Services Division Finance and Acquisitions Branch Logistics Support Branch Information Technology Branch Operations Branch Products Branch Archive Branch Regional Climate Centers Climate Database Modernization Program Product Development Branch Paleo-climatology Branch Climate Monitoring Branch User Engagement and Services Branch Data Access and Applications Branch Ingest and Analysis Branch

16. Partnership Liaison Activities Update 2008 • RCCs • AASC Action Teams • National Data Stewardship Team • Cross training customer service representatives on NVDI/CPO NCDC ACIS/NowData/CPC products • Social-Economic Web Page • FAQ Climate Change • Fact sheets in draft form – transportation, insurance, energy, health, agriculture • (Auto-overload-distribution to RCCs) • (FTEs at RCCs) • Liaising at national and state levels • NWS Sub-regional Climate Services Sacramento CA 01/08, Fargo ND 06/08, Madison WI 05/08, Peachtree City GA 06/07 • AASC & CSPM & NDST monthly telecons • NWSTC Climate Services Courses:  09/07 & 12/07 & 02/08 • (Climate Portal - not noaa.gov/climate)

17. Regional Climate CentersUpdate 2008 • Positioning RCCs in National Climate Services • RCC Contract Modifications • Basic Regional Climate Services • Advanced Regional Climate Services • Data – collection – mapping - mesonets • Science analysis • Outreach – education – Fact Sheets - talks • Supplemental Climate Services • Data stewardship - BLM – CDMP – NWS support • Applied Climatology in GEOSS theme areas – AASC coordination • HCN-M reference climate network • Added RCC Regional Monthly State of Climate Summary to NCDC National Summary • (State input for extreme events temp and precip) • (State summaries of significant climate user applications) • (Map Events of previous month in climate context)

18. AASC Action Teams • ARSCO’s and RCC’s cooperation. • Ted Sammis (NM), Paul Knight (PA) • Explore range of communication media to recommend avenues of more frequent communications between RCC’s and their adjoining ARSCO’s. 2. SC ACIS • Jim Zandlo (MN), co-chair with Keith Eggleston (NRCC), Jim Angel (IL), George Taylor (OR), Ryan Boyles (NC) and Lesley-Ann Dupingy-Giroux (VT) • Develop list of most useful products/queries for SC’s. Develop procedures for making changes in the future. Connect with RCC’s to determine the feasibility and likely costs of implementation. 3. Mesonet • Ken Crawford (OK), chair; Scott Archer (BLM), Stu Foster (KY), Ken Hubbard (HPRCC).[switching to kelly Redmond] • Review and edit recommendations on siting, metadata, sensors and access for mesonet/modernized legacy cooperative stations. Design recommendations for coop legacy/mesonet for communications, storage and system security. 4. Official Data - Extremes • Dennis Todey (SD) chair, Marjorie McGuirk (NCDC), Jeff Andresen (MI), Steve Hilberg (MRCC), Pat Guinan (MO), Mark Schafer (OK) • Develop preliminary recommendations to NCDC on how to consider non-NOAA network data as ‘official’. Consider also which data sets should be stored. 5. Lincoln Accord follow-up • Harry Hillaker (IA), chair, Matt Menne (NCDC), Chris Fiebrich (OK), consult with Kelly Redmond (WRCC), Tony Bergantino (WY), and Ken Hubbard (HPRCC) • Develop a flexible, mobile principle or method of quality assurance of a variety of data sets.

19. AASC Action Teams (con’t) 6a. Strengthen AASC Members - Recommend new MOA between SC’s and NCDC • Paul Knight (PA), chair, Derek Arndt (OK), John Young (WI) and Ryan Boyles (NC) • Take an inventory of what are the arrangements between SC’s and their Governor’s Office. Propose a new MOA for NCDC that stresses ARSCO qualifications. 6b. Standing Committee forRecommendations on Recertification of ARSCO members • Dave Robinson (NJ), chair, Pat Michaels (VA), George Taylor (OR), Jan Curtis (NRCS), John Young (WI), and Jim Angel (IL) • Determine necessary components of an ARSCO, absolute minimum requirements, a model ARSCO and the process to become one. Recommend the professional development of ARSCO members. 7. Recommendations on Advocacy of ARSCO and its members • Mark Schafer (OK), chair, Mike Anderson (CA), Steve Gray (WY) and Derek Arndt (OK) • Develop an advisory plan to advocate ARSCO’s considering a variety of resources, including upper level management from NOAA. Determine potential cost for first level of advocacy. Construct a mentorship plan and its procedures. 8. Inventory of AASC SC/RCC members • Paul Knight (PA), co-chair, Nolan Doesken (CO) • Identify membership roles and participation on boards, committees, etc. throughout the profession. Compile list of activities, including honors.

20. Official Data- Update 2008 • Meeting June 10 2008- archive protocols and plans for environmental data management across NOAA. • DAARWG (data archive and requirements working group) and the data center directors • NOAA Data Centers, Centers of Data • Discuss a new framework for NOAA archive architecture to include a new appraisal and approval process • What to Archive procedure • internal NOAA team for final review • Constituent review to follow • Future NOAA website for public comments 

21. A New QA/QC Approach for Daily Data • GHCN-Daily as the foundation • GHCN = Global Historical Climatology Network • Tmax, Tmin, Precipitation, Snowfall/depth • >23,000 temperature and >40,000 precipitation stations • Operational dataset, currently available via FTP • Dozens of data sources fully integrated • U.S. Cooperative Summary of the Day (DSI-3200, 3206) • U.S. First Order and ASOS (DSI-3210, 3211, 3505, 6407) • Numerous international collections (including GSN) • Twice per day updates for ~9000 stations from four sources (HPRCC, DSI-3201, Environment Canada, and GSOD)

22. Science-Based Quality Assurance • Suite of complementary Q/A reviews • Focus on the most egregious errors • Internal consistency and frequent-value checks • Temporal and spatial consistency checks • At least a dozen tests per variable • Performed in a deliberate sequence • Rigorous evaluation of each check • Durre, I., M.J. Menne, and R.S. Vose. 2008. Strategies for evaluating quality assurance procedures. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology (in press) • No check has a false positive rate >20% • Less than 1% of all values are flagged (excluding “shifters”)

23. The Near Future • Additional bells and whistles (tentative dates) • Spatial regression test (September 2008) • Teleconference with RCCs and SCs (October 2008) • New “shifter” test (November 2008) • Forts data and MRCC COOP data (December 2008) • Other variables (September 2009?) • CDO access (December 2009?) • For more information • http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/ghcn-daily/ • Contact: Russell.Vose@noaa.gov • BAMS manuscript on GHCN-Daily (draft by September 2008) • JAMC manuscript on Q/A (draft by December 2008)

24. National Data Stewardship TeamNCDC, NWS (CSPM CPM CSD) AASCActivities & Issues • QA/QC • Monthly temp average techniques • F6 – ACIS – LCD – nowdata – CDO • CRN – HCN-M – New England • Original vs Edited Value • Integrated Surface Data – • Climate Data Online ACIS • Hail in snowfall column • QC Limits in WxCoder III • Extreme Values • ThreadEx • Non-NOAA data source • Official vs not-official • Archive vs data storage • Reference Networks • CRN • HCN-AL • HCN-Modernization project • SEBN

25. http://www.economics.noaa.gov/?

27. Climate Services Partnerships collaboration between NCDC & AASC • Re-iterate - NCDC is prepared to • Pay publications page charges when NCDC is co-author • Share professional graphics and scientific diagrams and charts • Consider appointing ARSCO members as IPA appointments in-house • Provide a phone bridge for ARSCO meetings that involve NCDC members • Provide a summary of areas of expertise of NCDC scientists for possible collaboration • Through the RCCs provide IT support for climate services, Web site support, and in particular Mapping, and scACIS. • Update 2008 – New role for AASC collaboration? • Cooperation on the Climate Services Web Portal • Education & Outreach – Simple linking from state institutions to SCOs, RCCs and NCDC • Reporting of Climate Extremes as they occur to RCCs for the monthly climate monitoring

28. Climate Services Partnershipscollaboration between NOAA & AASC • Roles State Climatologists* in the broader NOAA context • Climatologists for community, county, state-wide boards & tasks teams • Natural trust establishing administrative, economic, social and legal linkages between climate information sources and local needs • Listen Locally, then Act Locally** • Preferred sources of climate information for state laws and regulations wrt climate • Advise the governor • drought status • impact of several climate scenarios on mountain snowpack accumulation and melt • Impacts on irrigated agriculture • evaluate changing risks of extreme precipitation • Update 2008? • Many suggestions on the AASC list • New Members on AASC Exec Council *Mark Shafer 2007 AMS – Second look at AASC vision statement on climate services in 2003 that harmonized with the NRC's "Climate Services Vision" document. **Comments collected from AASClist - Phil Mote WA, Deke Arndt & Ken Crawford OK, Mark Shafer, Nancy Selover AZ, Pao-Shin Chu HI, Dennis Todey SD, Michael Anderson CA, Jim Angel IL, Dave Stooksbury, Jan Curtis NRCS

29. xmACIS(NWS Field Office Use) Applied Climate Information System Data query tool for NWS local climate research/local product development, and to answer customer climate record inquiries Complete historical climate database with near real-time update agACIS (Custom data and products for the NCRS) NOWData(Customer Use) Self-service tool Subset of xmACIS Free, limited access For current year and Normals Portal for ACIS and NCDC information ThreadEx(Open Use) Consistent daily temperature and precipitation extremes Datzilla(Partner Use) Data discrepancy reporting 400 registered NOAA users WxCoder III(COOP Use) Internet observation entry system NCDC-RCC-NWS CollaborationNational Climate Services Data Tools