Over the last several years, nearly everybody in meteorology has become acquainted with the notion of “climate services”. Beginning with the National Research Council’s Climate Services Vision: First Steps Toward the Future in 2001, a number of prominent papers and plans have emerged. The National Weather Service is aggressively re-entering the field, with climate services personnel in each regional headquarters and a planned designated focal point in every field office. With the rush toward new products and services, it is worthwhile to pause a moment and ask: are we developing the correct strategy for providing climate services?

The structure of climate services is largely being driven by three factors: increased societal vulnerability, the need for efficiency, and the structure of federalism. Despite having an active array of climate services for at least the last half-century, society’s vulnerability to climate change and variability is increasing. Billion-dollar catastrophes have become the norm. Although individual events may not be preventable, there is a wealth of knowledge that could make events less damaging, including options ranging from planning to construction codes to lessening the impacts of the physical environment.

Federal agencies across-the-board are being required to prove their effectiveness. The President’s Management Agenda, centerpiece of the Bush Administration’s efforts to increase efficiency in government, links budgets to impacts. Among the requirements is that each agency prove that its programs are effectively reaching goals and target audiences. When it comes to delivering services to the general public, this can sometimes be problematic.

The third factor, federalism, has undergone a transition over the last several decades as well. While the role of federal government has periodically waxed and waned, the role of state government has been on a steady increase. Most states have much more advanced capabilities to deliver services to communities than they had twenty or thirty years ago. At the same time, the federal government has become more restricted in what services it can provide. Policies and lawsuits limit the amount of information or tailored services available to the public. This makes states an even more vital conduit between information collected by the federal government and local decision makers who can benefit from that knowledge.

As we go forward in developing a plan of climate services, each provider needs to re-think its roles and relationships to other providers. We have before us an opportunity to reconstruct these relationships in a way that maximizes efficiency, capitalizes upon advances in the capabilities of states and local governments, and reaches more communities and decision makers so they can take effective action to mitigate the impacts of nature’s whims. Successfully matching climate information with decision-makers’ needs requires interaction among a much broader community and substantial changes in the traditional roles of each.