WH unveils plans for climate data portal

The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled an initiative aimed at giving communities data to prepare for the effects of climate change.

{mosads}The Climate Data Initiative will bring together data from multiple federal agencies and make it available for free, White House advisers John Podesta and John Holdren said in a blog post. The first set of data focuses on coastal flooding and sea level changes.
 
“While no single weather event can be attributed to climate change, we know that our changing climate is making many kinds of extreme events more frequent and more severe,” the advisers wrote, naming rising sea levels, wildfires, heat waves and heavy rain as examples.

“Even as we work to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and expand renewable energy generation, we need to take steps to make our communities more resilient to the climate-change impacts we can’t avoid — some of which are already well underway,” they wrote.

The information will be hosted at climate.data.gov, part of Data.gov, the open data initiative Obama launched in 2009.

Along with the data initiative, the White House announced Esri, Google Inc. and other private companies have committed to helping the climate change resilience effort.

Later Wednesday, the White House plans to host an event on government and private efforts to deal with climate change.