Advancing a Coordinated Strategy for Decision-Relevant Climate Data Products for the United States

Climate adaptation practitioners, planners, and policymakers rely on historical reconstructions and future projections of regional to local climate for adaptation, resilience, and risk management. To serve the many needs of these users, climate data must be relevant for informing the decision-making process (“salient”), consistent with our physical understanding of the global Earth system (“credible”), backed by expert judgment (“authoritative”), and publicly available and ready for use (“accessible”). As more decision-relevant climate data products are being developed to address outstanding needs, significant issues have emerged around the selection, evaluation, use, and standardization of these data products. This article examines opportunities and challenges associated with regional climate data for the United States and describes nascent efforts to build a coordinated strategy among communities of producers and users to maximize the utility of decision-relevant datasets. A community of practice (CoP) is now emergingunder development to benefit both end-users and data producers. The CoP will enable enhanced evaluation protocols, improved uncertainty quantification, and eased data distribution and usage, informed by ongoing input on data needs and feedback on quality and usability of data from a wide range of user communities. Broad coordination among interested parties and periodic reviews of the state of the field are vital to the success of this community of practice.