I 
111TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 2306 
To provide for the establishment of a National Climate Service, and for 
other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MAY 7, 2009 
Mr. DICKS introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee 
on Science and Technology 
A BILL 
To provide for the establishment of a National Climate 
Service, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘National Climate Serv-
ice Act of 2009’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
The Congress finds the following: 
(1) Weather, climate change, and climate varia-
bility affect public safety, environmental services and 
security, human health, agriculture, energy use, 
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water resources, and other factors vital to national 
security and human welfare. 
(2) Climate forecasts create opportunities for 
society to prepare, potentially reducing the costs of 
climate-related events, as well as serving national 
needs related to enhancing economic growth, man-
aging risk, protecting life and property, and pro-
moting environmental stewardship. 
(3) Information on predicted climate and cli-
mate impacts is not being fully disseminated or used 
well, despite the increasing predictability of climate. 
(4) The United States lacks adequate research, 
infrastructure, and coordinated outreach and com-
munication mechanisms to meet national climate 
monitoring, prediction, and decision support needs 
for adapting to and mitigating the impacts of cli-
mate change and climate variability. 
(5) Increasing societal resilience to climate im-
pacts requires understanding climate trends and 
variations as well as possible, understanding the im-
pacts of climate on human and nonhuman systems, 
providing decision-relevant tools based on that infor-
mation, and increasing society’s capacity to act on 
that information. 
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SEC. 3. PURPOSE. 
It is the purpose of this Act to establish a National 
Climate Service that will assist the Nation and the world 
in understanding, anticipating, and responding to climate, 
climate change, and climate variability and their impacts 
and implications. The Service shall inform the public 
through the sustained production and delivery of authori-
tative, timely, useful information about impacts on local, 
State, regional, tribal, national, and global scales. The 
Service shall be user-centric, by ensuring that the informa-
tion is accessible, consistent with users’ ability to respond, 
and based on user needs and limitations. The Service shall 
provide such usable information through a sustained net-
work of observations, modeling, and research activities. 
SEC. 4. NATIONAL CLIMATE SERVICE. 
(a) ESTABLISHMENT.— 
(1) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary of Commerce 
shall establish within the Climate Program Office of 
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-
tion a National Climate Service (in this Act referred 
to as the ‘‘Service’’) not later than one year after 
the date of enactment of this Act. The Service shall 
include a national center and a network of regional 
and local facilities for operational climate observa-
tion, modeling, and research. 
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(2) GENERAL PURPOSE.—The Service shall in-
form the public through the sustained production 
and delivery of authoritative, timely, useful informa-
tion about impacts on local, State, regional, tribal, 
national, and global scales. 
(3) SPECIFIC SERVICES.—The Service, at min-
imum, shall— 
(A) serve as a clearinghouse and technical 
access point to stakeholders for regionally and 
nationally relevant information on climate, cli-
mate impacts, and adaptation, developing com-
prehensive databases of information relevant to 
specific regional and national stakeholder needs; 
(B) provide education on climate impacts, 
vulnerabilities, and application of climate infor-
mation in decisionmaking; 
(C) design decision-support tools that fa-
cilitate use of climate information in stake-
holders’ near-term operations and long-term 
planning 
(D) facilitate user access to climate and 
climate impacts experts for technical assistance 
in use of climate information and to inform the 
climate forecast community of their information 
needs; 
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(E) provide researcher, modeler, and obser-
vations experts access to users to help guide di-
rection of research, modeling, and observation 
activities; and 
(F) propose and evaluate adaptation strat-
egies for climate variability and change. 
(4) SPECIFIC
FUNCTIONS.—The Service, at 
minimum, shall— 
(A) integrate global, national, and regional 
observations to produce information and assess-
ments of use to stakeholders and researchers; 
(B) develop climate models for decision 
support; 
(C) perform basic and applied research on 
climate dynamics and impacts relevant to stake-
holder interests; 
(D) create and maintain an operational de-
livery system and facilitate transition of new cli-
mate applications products to Service member 
agencies; 
(E) establish an atmospheric monitoring 
and verification program utilizing aircraft, sat-
ellite, ground sensors, ocean and coastal observ-
ing systems, and modeling capabilities to mon-
itor, measure, and verify greenhouse gas con-
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centrations and emissions throughout the global 
oceans and atmosphere; 
(F) develop and maintain a dialog among 
research teams, Federal agencies, and stake-
holders for developing information relevant for 
planning and decisionmaking; 
(G) identify climate-related vulnerabilities 
and build national capacity to increase resil-
ience; 
(H) articulate regional and national cli-
mate issues and concerns in regional and na-
tional policy arenas and facilitate regional-na-
tional communications on Service needs and 
performance; and 
(I) outreach to stakeholder groups. 
(b) ACTION PLAN.—Within 1 year after the date of 
enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Commerce shall 
submit to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and 
Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on 
Science and Technology of the House of Representatives 
a plan of action for the National Climate Service. The 
plan, at a minimum, shall— 
(1) provide for the interpretation and commu-
nication of climate data, conditions, predictions, pro-
jections, and risks on an ongoing basis to decision 
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and policy makers at the local, regional, and na-
tional levels; 
(2) design, deploy, and operate a national cli-
mate observing system that closes gaps in existing 
coverage; 
(3) support infrastructure and ability to archive 
and ensure the quality of climate data, and make 
federally funded model simulations and other rel-
evant climate information available from Global 
Change Research Program activities and other 
sources (and related data from paleoclimate studies); 
(4) include a program for long-term steward-
ship, quality control, development of relevant climate 
products, and efficient access to all relevant climate 
data, products, and model simulations; 
(5) establish a national coordinated modeling 
strategy, including a national climate modeling cen-
ter to provide a dedicated capability for modeling 
and forecasting scenarios, and a regular schedule of 
projections on long-term and short-term time hori-
zons over a range of scales, including regional scales; 
(6) improve integrated modeling, assessment, 
and predictive capabilities needed to document and 
forecast climate changes and impacts, and to guide 
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national, regional, and local planning and decision-
making; 
(7) provide a system of regular consultation 
and coordination with Federal agencies, States, 
tribes, nongovernmental organizations, the private 
sector, and the academic community to ensure— 
(A) that the information requirements of 
these groups are well incorporated; and 
(B) timely and full sharing, dissemination 
and use of climate information and services in 
risk preparedness, planning, decisionmaking, 
and early warning and natural resources man-
agement, both domestically and internationally; 
(8) develop standards, evaluation criteria, and 
performance objectives to ensure that the Service 
meets the evolving information needs of the public, 
policy makers, and decisionmakers in the face of a 
changing climate; 
(9) develop funding estimates to implement the 
plan; and 
(10) support competitive research programs 
that will improve elements of the Service described 
in this Act through the Climate Program Office 
within the Service headquarter function. 
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