How will NOAA Research help us meet the challenges faced by society?
Looking ahead to the next 30-50 years, climate change will affect almost every aspect of society, including economic prosperity, human and environmental health, and national security. We face impacts from droughts, flooding, extreme weather, heat waves, sea level rise, and other environmental hazards that put lives, property and ecosystems at risk.
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict our changing environment. This puts NOAA front-and-center in our nation’s efforts to understand how climate is changing and its impacts on society. Our vision is to center our science done by our laboratories and research programs on the following four challenges to help the nation:
- Confront the challenges from our changing climate that is impacting almost every aspect of our lives.
- Protect against extreme weather events and environmental hazards to save lives, livelihoods, property and support healthy ecosystems.
- Manage too much and too little water ensuring both access and safety with Earth’s greatest resource.
- Sustain a healthy environment and economy together, helping people understand how their choices will impact their communities.
NOAA alone cannot solve these existential challenges but NOAA Research’s expertise, data and tools will improve our understanding of the planet and help us to make informed decisions to protect people and ecosystems.
Delivering Knowledge for a Prosperous Society
NOAA Research is focusing our work towards empowering society to be safer, healthier and more prosperous by 2050. As people navigate the biggest environmental, weather and climate challenges over the coming decades, NOAA Research is providing accurate and timely information, tools and services about how our planet’s atmosphere, ocean and climate is changing. This information is critical for our society’s ability to make decisions that protect public safety, health and livelihoods, effectively manage our natural resources, and help our communities adapt to a changing climate. We ask that you please join us on this endeavor for the benefit of our country and the world.
Since NOAA’s inception in 1970, we have made major strides in understanding how our planet is changing and how our ocean, weather, and climate systems interact. These accomplishments would not be possible without the collaboration with our government, academic, and private partners.