The Biden administration is launching a new government initiative to deliver accessible and actionable information to individuals and communities that are being hit by flooding, drought, wildfires, extreme heat, coastal erosion, and other intensifying climate impacts, the White House said on Tuesday.
According to the White House statement, administration officials announced a launch of a redesigned Climate.gov by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that integrates artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the accessibility of accurate and timely climate information.
The other announcement includes the “release of two new reports delivered to the National Climate Task Force outlining the ways the federal government will improve access to climate tools and services,” the statement said, adding “the initiation of a process by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assess the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) standards to help communities align their construction and land-use practices with the latest understandings of flood risk reduction.”
The Biden administration also announced the new-and-improved Climate Website. NOAA’s Climate Program Office launched a newly redesigned version of Climate.gov, NOAA’s award-winning, flagship website that provides the public with clear, timely, and science-based information about climate.
The administration further announced interagency reports on climate information services.
President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, agencies have developed two reports to the National Climate Task Force on climate information services to help governments, communities, and businesses prepare for and adapt to climate impacts.
The first report, titled “Opportunities for Expanding and Improving Climate Information and Services for the Public,” charts a course for expanding accessibility and use of the federal government’s climate information to support all communities, including those who have been historically underserved, on climate planning and resilience activities, the statement said.
The second report, titled “Advancing the Nation’s Geospatial Capabilities to Promote Federal, State, Local, and Tribal Climate Planning and Resilience,” focuses on the role the federal government plays in providing geospatial data and mapping tools, and the potential for a collaborative federal mapping service to make climate data more accessible, the statement said.
The report recommends: Building on the FGDC’s existing GeoPlatform, which provides public access to federal geospatial data, by ensuring that all agencies register their climate-related datasets; Making this data more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable; and Exploring potential enhancements to the GeoPlatform model with new software, services, or tools to help agencies and public-private partnerships develop specialized climate information products, the statement added.
