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Our Strategic Plan

The 2024-2028 Strategic Plan leverages CPO’s position at the intersection of NOAA’s science and service missions, the climate research community, and the broader climate enterprise to help guide the office towards its vision: “All peoples, economies, and environments are resilient to climate impacts and society works together to sustainably mitigate climate change.”  The new plan highlights CPO’s priorities including its mission and mandates by Congress to advance scientific understanding of climate variability and change, and to deliver actionable information to society for climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation. 

The office has arranged all of its strategic objectives around four major goals:

  1. Advance the science foundation for climate change adaptation, resilience, and mitigation. 
  2. Advance climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation by enhancing partnerships and providing actionable information.
  3. Improve public understanding and bolster capacity to respond to climate change. 
  4. Empower our workforce to advance NOAA’s priorities. 
Strategic Plan 2024-2028 cover
The plan is organized to provide a strategic roadmap for climate that guides CPO’s research agenda and forges partnerships that enhance society’s ability to make effective decisions. Additionally, the Strategic Plan stresses integration and coordination across CPO’s and NOAA’s climate assets. This plan highlights CPO’s unique role as the only entity in NOAA that, for over 30 years, has sustained a comprehensive approach to advancing climate science and services, spanning multiple science disciplines, organizations, and timescales. The CPO Strategic Plan, was informed by an office review by an external panel, and it was reviewed by the NOAA Science Advisory Board’s Climate Working Group.
CPO’s programs are helping U.S. farmers prepare for dry soil, scorching heat, and other climate impacts in recent summers. The map above, based on the U.S. Drought Monitor, shows drought and abnormally dry conditions across the contiguous U.S. on July 10, 2012.

CPO’s programs are helping U.S. farmers prepare for dry soil, scorching heat, and other climate impacts in recent summers. The map above, based on the U.S. Drought Monitor, shows drought and abnormally dry conditions across the contiguous U.S. on July 10, 2012. View large image and description.

Recent Accomplishments

Observations and Monitoring

  • Completed the Climate Reference Network— NOAA’s benchmark United States climate observing network
  • Worked with more than 70 partners to implement over 50% of the sustained Global Ocean Observing System

Understanding and Modeling

  • Over 300 active grants
  • Over 700 published papers per year, contributing to our understanding of climate variability and change

Informing Decisions

  • Supported climate training workshops, and reports directed to needs of resource managers
  • Funded National Research Council reports, including America’s Climate Choices to provide advice to the nation on responding to climate change

Program Development

  • 647K unique visits to NOAA Climate.gov last year (62.5% more than previous year), communicating climate science to the public
  • 186 Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellows, 35 AMS Graduate Fellows, and 11 Post Docs Applying Climate Expertise (PACE) since inception of programs

Visit us online at www.climate.gov to learn more about our science and services and how they’re benefitting society; or at www.cpo.noaa.gov to learn more about the Climate Program Office and its grants programs.

Email: oar.cpo.office@noaa.gov

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