Metadata Process and Presentation in The Fifth National Climate Assessment

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is the preeminent source of climate information for the United States. The Fifth NCA (NCA5), developed by the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), is scheduled for release in late 2023. As a highly influential scientific assessment, NCA5 adheres to the Information Quality Act and the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act by upholding the highest standards of intellectual property rights, copyright permissions, information transparency, and reproducibility. All figures in the report contain complete metadata documentation, largely completed by Assessment authors with support from NOAA’s Technical Support Unit, who built a custom survey for metadata collection, conducted extensive quality control of submitted information and underlying datasets, and ensured the consistency and compliance of metadata across NCA5 products. In this presentation, we will outline the process for coordinating documentation of over 880 figure panels, highlight how researchers can use the NCA5 website’s metadata viewer to support their own research, and explore the underlying datasets that make NCA5 the most graphics-heavy NCA to date.