Findings of the Gulf coast climate information needs assessment

The Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP), co-led by Louisiana State University (LSU) and the University of Oklahoma (OU), is a climate research initiative whose goal is to help communities better plan for weather and climate-related disasters in the southern United States, particularly in the face of a changing climate. To better focus the SCIPP products and projects, the SCIPP-LSU group has undertaken an assessment of climate and related information needs as they pertain to a large regional community of stakeholders along the western half of the Gulf Coast. This project is generating critical information about communities, including what they perceive as their critical present and future climate-related issues; the decision scales used by communities (both space and time) where information is needed; the information they want to help them make climate-related decisions; where they get information now and from whom; and any education products or efforts they would be interested in making available to their communities around climate information. The work on the Gulf Coast is built off a similar process that is assessing the climate needs across Oklahoma. By using similar assessment tools and procedures (e.g. personal interviews) in the OK study and along the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi we will be able to compare and contrast the findings between an in-land state and a coastal region. This presentation will focus on the preliminary findings of the Gulf Coast region study.