Quality Climate Data for All: How the National Climate Assessment Connects Users to Actionable Climate Information

Abstract:

Transparent, accessible, reproducible, and open – these requirements, defined by the Information Quality Act (IQA) and the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (EBPA), govern the use of data in the National Climate Assessment (NCA). Tools and methods used to reach compliance with these mandates have been evolutionary across multiple National and Sustained Assessment reports; however, one thing has remained consistent, and that is the access to the full suite of source, dataset, methodology, and (soon-to-be-available) software code documentation made available to policy and decision makers, as well as the general public. Through a web-based interactive Metadata Collection Survey and separate Metadata Viewer, NOAA’s Technical Support Unit (TSU) has collected and provided access to more than 170 climate science and policy relevant datasets, along with the accompanying methodology details for reproducible analysis and visualization. The Viewer not only demonstrates IQA and EBPA compliance, it serves as a single, authoritative resource to access, understand, and experience the climate science information presented in each Assessment. Over the past 6 years, the access to this information has served to strengthen the relationship between policy-relevant climate information and any end-user. This information has been used by media, researchers, and industry leaders alike. This presentation will detail how the TSU approaches NCA metadata collection, IQA and EBPA compliance, and the delivery and demonstration of both to all end users of the NCA.