Highlights
Funded Projects
NOAA Provides Support for the Publication of a Climate Change Adaptation Guidebook.
The Climate Impacts Group (CIG), a NOAA funded Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) program, working together with King County, Washington Executive Ron Sims, King County 's climate team and ICLEI- Local Governments for Sustainability has created a guidebook on preparing for and adapting to climate change. "
Preparing for Climate Change: A Guidebook for Local, Regional, and State Governments is designed to help local, regional, and state governments prepare for climate change by recommending a detailed, easy-to-understand process for climate change preparedness based on familiar resources and tools." The guidebook is funded in part through the Transition of Research Applications to Climate Services (TRACS) program and was supported by the Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP) both of which are part of the Office of Atmospheric Research (OAR) Climate Program Office. ICLEI will be distributing the document to over 250 cities, towns and counties as part of ICLEI's Climate Resilient Communities program.
The guidebook is available at:
RISA Climate Impacts Group (CIG)
Related Links:
Transition of Research Applications to Climate Services (TRACS) Program and Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP): Climate Safe Cities Project
King County (guidebook)
ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability (guidebook)
ICLEI Climate Resilient Communities (CRC)
Climate Services Example
RDS Program - WESTMAP (Western Regional Mapping Initiative): Fine Scale Regional Climate Data, User Tools, Educational Resources
Brief description of NOAA service or product: WESTMAP is a prototype web interactive tool for mapping of gridded (i.e. mapable) western climate data (e.g. using GIS) for applications in a variety of sectors (based on the PRISM-Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model dataset from the University of Oregon). WESTMAP allows mapping of PRISM data fields including monthly maximum/minimum/mean temperature and monthly precipitation plus standard anomaly and climatology fields for the Western US from 1895-present with a key feature allowing users to custom map smaller areas of specific relevance to their decision. The WESTMAP website will also include various data analysis, assessment, and diagnostics tools supporting user requirements. 1
Background/history of development: WESTMAP has been funded since 2005 under the NOAA Transition of Research Applications to Climate Services (TRACS) Program through a grant with the University of Arizona in partnership with the Oregon State University and the Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC). Web tool prototypes are currently in the development and internal testing phase. Stakeholder testing and related revisions will occur in phases: Alpha-test: Winter 2006; Beta-test: Spring 2007; Full Test and Evaluation: Fall 2007/Spring 2008. The WESTMAP Project goal is to be fully operational at the WRCC by September 2008.
Dependant upon which specific NOAA capabilities: This transition project relies on both the CLIMAS-Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) Team at the University of Arizona, and the WRCC that NOAA supports via OAR and NESDIS in partnership with the State of Nevada. Initial development of the PRISM data sets were supported partly by the NOAA Climate Program Office, and include base data drawn from sources, such as, the NOAA Historical Climatology Network (HCN), as well as a variety of data archived at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).
Who uses the output? Engineers, recreation interests, forestry experts, land managers, water resource managers, drought response and relief agencies, planners, hydrologists and climatologists.
Have economic benefits been quantified? If so, what are they? Not yet, but all TRACS projects are required to perform a post-audit analysis of economic and other benefits.
Describe potential for growth, demand, gaps and/or needs: Once completed, the WRCC will operationally and financially support WESTMAP for the foreseeable future. The continuously (i.e. operationally) updated PRISM dataset on which WESTMAP relies is supported through research funding provided by the State of Oregon and Federal Agencies, along with nominal commercial sales of PRISM data and tools. However, there is not an "operational" funding stream for sustaining daily updates of WESTMAP.
1 In a nutshell, NOAA collects quality controls and archives point climate data. PRISM runs the data through an elevation/slope model to create a gridded (i.e. "filled-in" and mapable) dataset. WESTMAP is the web interface allowing users to manipulate and map the data.
