Midwestern Regional Climate Center: Building partnerships across sectors

The Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC) has been providing climate data and services to the Midwestern region for over 30 years. While long-standing partners have been the National Weather Service and state climatologists, advances in climate awareness and impacts have encouraged the MRCC reach out, identify and build collaborations with a wide variety of climate partners. Through regional road trips, climate collaboration meetings, and conversations with other climate-interested groups, the MRCC has expanded its partnerships to include Great Lakes issues (Sea Grant, GLISA), agriculture issues (University extension, producers, U2U collaborators), and atmospheric observation networks (regional, state, and local mesonet leaders). As a regional climate center, the MRCC is focused on identifying new climate partners and local climate needs through collaborations such as the Regional Climate Service Directors, student interns, professional conferences, and newsletter communication. Every partner has his or her own objective and climate need. For the MRCC, these relationships could span from research, to climate monitoring and decision support tool development, to cross-sector communication facilitation.