Climate Hubs Created to Help Communities Facing Extreme Weather Events

With climate change at the forefront of the current political discourse, the Obama Administration announced today that plans are in motion to establish seven regional 'climate hubs' to help areas that are experiencing changing weather conditions.

The role of these climate hubs is to "deliver information to farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners to help them adapt to climate change and weather variability," as described on the United States Department of Agriculture website. These hubs will be overseen by the USDA and will provide the department with "information and guidance on technologies and risk management practice at regional and local scales."

The seven hubs will be located in a state of each geographic region of the country: Northeast (Durham, New Hampshire), Southeast (Raleigh, North Carolina), Midwest (Ames, Iowa), Southern Plains (El Reno, Oklahoma), Northern Plains (Fort Collins, Colorado), Southwest (Las Cruces, New Mexico), and Pacific Northwest (Corvallis, Oregon).

"USDA's climate hubs are part of our broad commitment to developing the next generation of climate solutions so that our agricultural leaders have the modern technologies and tools they need to adapt and succeed in the face of a changing climate," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in this CNN article.

Their objective is to serve these regions and provide them with the proper information they need in order to prepare, evaluate, adapt and innovate for a given situation. A major advantage of this new system is that local and rural communities will be provided with information that they didn't readily have before.

Mr. Vilsack mentioned the possibility of creating these climate hubs last year, and the announcement from President Obama comes after his State of the Union Address where he promised to focus on the climate change issue.

The hubs will primarily assist with areas that are affected by droughts, floods, fires and pests. They are meant to micromanage more minor weather occurrences and not large-scale disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.

To read more about the creation of these new climate hubs, visit this CNN article and this USA Today article.