Opportunities

There are a broad array of potential collaboration opportunities at NCDC and its NOAA partner centers and laboratories. This section focuses on immediate science and policy areas at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. At a very high level the Center’s needs span the range from basic and applied natural science research, social science research, policy research and development and outreach to the public.

There are three science-driven units at the National Climatic Data Center: the Global Climate Applications Division, the Remote Sensing & Applications Division and the Climate Services and Monitoring Division. Their respective foci are:

1. surface observing systems and observations including historical and paleo proxies,
2. remotely sensed observing systems and observations, space and surface-based, and
3. product development and delivery for national, regional and local uses, and engagement of stakeholders in defining their needs.

Global Climate Applications Division

The Global Climate Applications Division interests are in surface observing system implementation, management and verification, development and implementation of cutting edge mathematical, statistical and scientific approaches analyses of environmental observations, and, the development and production of timely, robust “state of the science” analyses from surface observing observing systems.

There are multiple aspects to providing robust observations. A robust observing system design must be developed, implemented and maintained, and a well-designed data processing system must be designed and used to prepare the climate-quality observations. It is the combination of the two that yields a suitably robust climate-quality observation.

Sensors fail and other unexpected events can contaminate the raw observation record. The figure on the left illustrates how a faulty sensor could contaminate an observation record. These sorts of artifacts are addressed by deploying multiple sensors for each parameter at each site, as well as having dense-enough observing arrays. Then, sophisticated processing algorithms are used on the raw data records to detect, document and correct unusual changes in an observing site's record.

Once all the spurious observations have been identified and addressed, the irregular space-time series are resampled to regular grids to facilitate analysis. An example of a product from such an analysis is shown at the right. This shows the Jan-Dec global mean temperature over land and ocean from 1880 to 2009. There are many collaborative research opportunities available for Earth scientists, mathematicians and statisticians in this area.

Remote Sensing & Applications Division

The Remote Sensing & Applications Division interests include Earth viewing remote observations of all types and remote surface observations, e.g., NEXRAD (WSR-88D) RADAR observations. These interests include the basic physics and engineering of remote sensors, calibration and validation of present and future remote sensing systems, development of observation fields from remote sensing systems, and, putting in place a robust infrastructure for the stewardship of remotely sensed Earth observations — this activity includes Climate Data Records (CDRs) and Scientific Data Stewardship. The most recent "Federal Funding Opportunity" announcement is from 2008.

An appreciation for the functional development from concept to mature observation and agency roles is provided by a slide from Bates, et. al., (2008) excerpted in the figure below (click on the figure to view at full resolution).

Climate Services & Monitoring Division

The Climate Services and Monitoring Division develops and makes available a number of national and global climate analyses, e.g., State of the Climate, manages NOAA’s Regional Climate Centers (RCCs), produces and provides a variety of Climate Monitoring products, and, has the reponsibility for engaging stakeholders in product development process. Currently, 12 national stakeholder sectors have been identified. The following figure provides an overview (click on the figure to view the Adobe PDF publication).

User Engagement, has overviews of each sector. There are also national, regional, state and local stakeholder components which cross-cut these economic sectors. A national overview is given in the latest US National Assessment “Global Change Impacts in the United States”. Regional outreach is handled through NOAA’s Regional Climate Centers.