As part of its climate mandate, NOAA has a responsibility to provide the Nation with objective data and tools to help it characterize, understand, predict, mitigate and adapt to climate change and variability. To help fulfill that responsibility, NOAA has been working with other federal agencies to develop an interagency Climate Data Record (CDR) initiative. The National Research Council (NRC, 2004) defines a CDR as “a time series of measurements of sufficient length, consistency, and continuity to determine climate variability and change.” As a whole, the developing program will support research on new satellite algorithms and products, systematically evolve, extend and maintain candidate CDR algorithms, routinely generate and validate CDRs demonstrating significant value to user communities, preserve and exercise stewardship over the resulting climate information, and support climate change studies based on CDRs. NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) initiated the Scientific Data Stewardship (SDS) Project to lead the Agency's CDR activities and to coordinate with the partner agencies. Given that early algorithm development is supported elsewhere, the SDS Project is focused on the generalization and application of mature algorithms to multiple satellites and sensors which together span climate-relevant time periods. It will also emphasize development and generation of Climate Information Records (CIRs), defined as time series of CDR-derived metrics tailored for specific users communities (e.g., hurricane trends, arctic sea ice coverage, coastal inundation). The SDS Project expects to execute its responsibilities in partnership with the larger scientific community through annual NOAA Announcements of Opportunity-- open to academic, commercial, non-profit and government proposers -- as well as through community reviews and working groups. This presentation will describe NOAA's approach, initial goals and objectives, and vision for the future under the new CDR initiative.