Obama Plans to Provide the Public with Climate Information on NASA-Operated Website

Dr. Mario Molina may have instilled some fear amongst government officials yesterday when he released his 18-page report on climate change. The Obama Administration plans to launch climate.data.gov to provide climate information to the public.

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will jointly operate the website and provide the public with the climate data needed to make clear that climate change could soon have immediate detrimental effects. This is a step in the right direction for the Obama Administration, which promised to be more proactive on the climate change agenda.

Federal data on climate change will be made available to inform those affected by climate change, and most importantly, help communities prepare for immediate threats. John Podesta and John Holdren, both advisers in the Obama Administration, reiterated the potential effectiveness of the website.

"The effort will help create easy-to-use tools for regional planners, farmers, hospitals, and businesses across the country--and empower America's communities to prepare themselves for the future," they said in their blog post, found in this International Business Times article.

This latest call for awareness on the climate change front is similar to the "Climate Hub" proposal from February. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the USDA will soon establish climate hubs, which are designed to "deliver information to farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners to help them adapt to climate change and weather variability," as described on the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Perhaps the website is a precursor to the climate hubs' presence.

The website also plans to display what areas of the country are most susceptible to climate change, including coastal areas that are likely to experience flooding and infrastructure that would likely be affected by a weather event.

The decision to launch this website most likely also comes as a result of this month's call for action regarding climate change by 30 senators in Congress. To read more about the Obama Administration's climate data initiative, visit this Christian Science Monitor article.