NOAA's Strategic Plan, “New Priorities for the 21st Century,” sets forth Four Strategic Goals: · Protect, restore, and manage the use of coastal and ocean resources through ecosystem-based management. · Understand climate variability and change to enhance society's ability to plan and respond, and · Serve society's needs for weather and water information. · Support the nation's commerce with information for safe, efficient, and environmentally sound transportation.

NOAA also established three Cross-Cutting Priorities, the first of these being systems for Integrated Global Environmental Observation and Data Management.

Against this backdrop, NOAA, through the Integrated Program Office, is developing the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), which will deliver operational Environmental Data Records (EDRs). NOAA is now charged with the creation of Climate Data Records (CDRs) from the operational satellite systems of the past, present and future. A climate data record is a time series of measurements of sufficient length, accuracy, and stability to detect, monitor, understand and predict climate variability and change over decadal to century time-scales. The suite of instruments on NPOESS should be capable of producing CDRs; however, the defining programmatic responsibilities, and hence the current architecture, do not adequately encompass the challenge faced by NOAA of delivering CDRs from NPOESS. This paper considers this challenge and what additional steps might be taken toward goal of having the NPOESS deliver CDRs.