NOAA Regional Climate Services: Southern Region Opportunities, Challenges, and First Steps

This paper highlights the early opportunities, challenges, and success stories that have emerged in NOAA's regional climate services program in the Southern Region in 2010-2011. A range of partnership opportunities are present within this geography, incorporating NOAA's climate services portfolio as well as external partners including federal, state, and local agencies, tribal and nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. Building capacity for new and enhanced climate services within these partnerships is frequently challenged by institutional structures, funding constraints, and uncoordinated parallel efforts; however, there is broad momentum among the partners to work collaboratively to remove these challenges. Early climate services success stories in 2010 and 2011 from within the Southern Region are highlighted, such as those centered on the historic South Central U.S. drought, the building of climate practitioner capacity in the Gulf of Mexico, and the initiation of new climate services engagement in the Caribbean.