Climate Monitoring Program funds 11 new projects to create new informational products describing our changing oceans and environment

The Climate Monitoring (CM) program supports research to develop and improve climate-related data sets, including the transformation of relevant observations into informative products, and the interpretation of such products to better detect, measure, and understand the current and changing state of the ocean, atmosphere, and Arctic at regional and global scales.

OOMD's wide range of observing platforms all contribute to the global ocean observing system used internationally. Credit: NOAA

In FY17, Climate Monitoring initiated 11 new awards totaling $3M in two areas of data set development that utilize observations from NOAA and others for:

• Creating global and regional ocean-focused indicators or products to advance the monitoring and understanding of large-scale features and variability of the ocean, and contribute towards better understanding of the important two-way relationship between the world’s oceans and our changing climate; and
• Developing and testing of indicators that provide a clear and concise way of communicating to the public and decisionmakers the status and trends of impactful physical changes of the atmosphere, ocean, and Arctic as part of a national Indicators system.

Through these awards, NOAA’s Climate Program Office will produce several new data products describing the changing environmental conditions that impact the US. Some of these products are aimed at advancing understanding, NOAA’s prediction enterprise, and knowledge of our changing climate. Other products are aimed to inform the public and others making decisions that may consider changes in our climate.

“Indices of climate variability and climate change using long-term physical and ecological ocean observations from the northern California Current” — Michael Banks, Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies (CIMRS) and William Peterson, Oceanographer and Senior Scientist, NOAA/Fisheries, Northwest Fisheries Science Center

“20th Century Atlantic surface wind indices” — Mark A. Bourassa and Shawn Smith, The Florida State University.

“A tropical upper-ocean stratification data set for climate and hurricane research” — Gregory Foltz, NOAA/Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Karthik Balaguru, Marine Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Collaborators: Bertrand Chapron and Nicolas Reul, Laboratoire Spatial et Interfaces Air-Mer, IFREMER, France, and Clement de Boyer Montegut, Laboratory of Oceanography from Space, IFREMER, France

“Interpolation of Subsurface Ocean Properties and Indices of Climate Variability” — Alexey Kaplan, Yochanan Kushnir, and Mark A. Cane, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University

“ENSO Indices For a Changing Climate”  — John W. Nielsen-Gammon, Texas A&M University
“Developing a Record Temperature Ratio Index for the U.S. and the Globe” — Anthony Arguez, Imke Durre, Karin Gleason, and Russell Vose, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information

“Development of a Western US Mountain Snowpack Climate Indicator”  — Amato Evan, Scripps Institute of Oceanography

“Developing extreme event climate change indicators related to human thermal comfort”  — Cameron Lee and Scott Sheridan, Kent State University

“Enhanced Historical Monitoring of Snow Cover Across Northern Hemisphere Lands”  — David A. Robinson, Rutgers University

“An indicator for U.S. coastal extreme sea levels” — Thomas Wahl, University of Central Florida and Don P. Chambers, University of South Florida

“Arctic Indicators for Assessment and Enhanced Understanding” — John Walsh, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Collaborators: Uma Bhatt, Hajo Eicken, Regine Hock, Vladimir Romanovsky University of Alaska Fairbanks