Climate variability and change present society with significant economic, health, safety, and national security challenges.

NOAA advances scientific and technical programs to help society cope with and adapt to today’s variations in climate and to prepare for tomorrow’s.

Toward this

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end, the agency conducts and supports climate research, essential oceanic and atmospheric observations, modeling, information management, assessments, interdisciplinary decision-support research, outreach, education, and partnership development.

These investments are key to NOAA’s mission of "Science, Service, and Stewardship" and are guided by the agency’s vision to create and sustain enhanced resilience in ecosystems, communities, and economies, as described in NOAA’s Next Generation Strategic Plan (NGSP).

Fostering climate adaptation and mitigation, and, specifically, the development of an informed society anticipating and responding to climate and its impacts is one of the primary pathways through which NOAA plans to advance its mission.

The NGSP outlines NOAA’s long-term climate goal, with the following objectives:
1) improved scientific understanding of the changing climate system and its impacts; 2) assessments of current and future states of the climate system that identify potential impacts and inform science, service, and stewardship decisions; 3) mitigation and adaptation choices supported by sustained, reliable, and timely climate services; and 4) a climate-literate public that understands its vulnerabilities to a changing climate and makes informed decisions.

NOAA works in partnership with all levels of governing structures (e.g., federal, state, tribal, regional, local) as well as academic, private, and international research entities, and it places a substantial emphasis on productive partnerships and interactions with decision-makers and other stakeholders.

Within this context, NOAA’s Climate Program Office (CPO) manages competitive research programs through which NOAA funds high-priority climate science, assessments, decision support research, outreach, education, and capacity-building activities designed to advance our understanding of Earth’s climate system and to foster the application of this knowledge to enable effective decisions.

CPO supports research that is conducted across the United States and internationally.

CPO also provides strategic guidance for the agency’s climate science and services programs and supports NOAA’s contributions to the U. S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and its National Climate Assessment and similar international endeavors.

In seeking to advance the NGSP climate objective of an improved scientific understanding of the changing climate system and its impacts, CPO supports research that advances core capabilities in (a) observing systems, climate monitoring and data stewardship (b) understanding and modeling, (c) predictions and projections, and (d) informing decisions.

These core capabilities are, in turn, intended to advance NOAA’s ability to provide sustained, reliable, and timely climate services dealing with the following broad, societal challenge areas:
(a) climate impacts on water resources, (b) coasts and climate resilience, (c) sustainability of marine ecosystems, and (d) changes in extremes of weather and climate.