Climate variability and change present society with significant economic, health, safety, and security challenges.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a vision, mission and a set of strategic goals to build a Climate Ready-Nation.

The Climate Program Office (CPO)

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supports this vision as part of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR).

A CPO core function is to support extramural research through a competitive grants process.

CPO’s programs span foundational, cross-disciplinary climate sciences, assessments, capacity building, tool development, and education.

CPO collaborates closely with partners within NOAA and with the broader academic, Federal, Tribal nations, international bodies, and private sector community.

CPO works in close partnership with the OAR laboratories and programs to complement and support its in-house research.

CPO also works with other parts of NOAA to support its mission areas in weather, oceans, fisheries, and service delivery.

CPO further builds networks, coalitions, and collaborations, converges around the best ideas, and provides support to accelerate emerging innovation across the climate enterprise.

Undertaking a range of climate science and services initiatives, CPO helps our Nation and the world address climate-related challenges and pursue solution-focused opportunities.

CPO’s definition of climate services is comprehensive, encompassing not only the development and dissemination of actionable climate science to inform decision making, but also the partnerships to engage in and understand the social and policy contexts within which climate-relevant decisions are made.

CPO plays a critical role in advancing science and informing decisions for climate adaptation, resilience, and mitigation as part of NOAA and the U. S. Global Change Research Program.

CPO research/science programs and activities meet urgent climate challenges, and incubate innovative advancements in Earth system and social sciences; support world-class assessment reports, including the National Climate Assessment; enhance and expand NOAA’s capabilities for integrated information systems for drought, heat and floods to deliver timely science-based information that can reduce the impacts and costs of these climate-driven challenges; educate and grow the next generation of experts in support of NOAA’s climate mission.

Through these new investments, CPO expands previous efforts focused on climate risks to address a suite of urgent climate-driven societal challenges faced by our Nation — including water availability and quality, marine and freshwater ecosystems, coastal changes and inundation, drought and extreme heat and related cascading hazards like wildfire, and air quality, and climate mitigation (more information about CPO Societal Challenges and Risks framework can be found here.

NOAA, OAR, and CPO require applicants and awardees to support the principles of diversity and inclusion when writing their proposals and performing their work; indeed, applicants will be evaluated, in part, on how well principles of diversity and inclusion are addressed.

Diversity is defined as a collection of individual attributes that together help organizations achieve objectives.

Inclusion is defined as a culture that connects each employee to the organization.

Promoting diversity and inclusion improves creativity, productivity, and the vitality of the climate research community in which CPO engages.