US forming new climate change agency

JOHN M. BRODER The New York Times 02/09/2010 04:26

WASHINGTON — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will create a new climate change office to gather and provide data to governments, industry and academia as part of a broad federal effort to prepare for long-term changes to the planet, officials said Monday.

The new unit, to be known as the NOAA Climate Service, will assemble the roughly 550 scientists and analysts already working on the issue at the agency into a cohesive group under a single leader.

The climate service is designed to be analogous to the National Weather Service, also part of NOAA, which celebrates its 140th birthday this month. Officials said they hoped the reorganization would shore up the profile of government climate science and perhaps drive the creation of new businesses like those that repackage and sell weather and census data.

“By providing critical planning information that our businesses and our communities need, NOAA Climate Service will help tackle head-on the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, whose department oversees the atmospheric agency, said in a statement. “In the process, we’ll discover new technologies, build new businesses and create new jobs.”

The agency has also created a Web site, http://www.climate.gov/, to make it easier for people to find government climate change data and analysis.

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