Noura Randle, 2021 Knauss Fellow
I had the opportunity to work in NOAA’s Climate Program Office. It was an interesting atmosphere to walk – virtually – into the climate centered office at the beginning of 2021 with the change of administration. I got to join at a time when climate and climate change were reentering the federal vocabulary with enthusiasm. My placement was in the Climate Observations and Monitoring (COM) Program, one of five programs that comprise the Earth System Science and Modeling (ESSM) Division. ESSM is centered around develop increased understanding of the Earth System, the different programs fund research supporting this overarching objective.
Despite having observations and monitoring in the title, the COM program does not fund new observations but rather the generation and curation of new datasets from pre-existing research and observations.
xkcd webcomic by Randall Munroe (https://m.xkcd.com/2582/)
Funding reanalysis or synthesis work may not be as flashy as supporting a new monitoring site or the launch of a new satellite, but it provides an important opportunity to further leverage existing data and research. The COM program also funds endeavors focused on data quality control and how to bridge instrumental differences (i.e.new vs old satellites) between datasets to increase utility and timespan of datasets. One notable project has been the Last Millennium Reanalysis project that enabled the generation of annually resolved gridded climatological data going back 2000 years from 1950. It was a massive project that involved multiple researchers from different institutions. Already this dataset has been used by the scientific community and has shown up in multiple publications, and has even played a role in this Fellow’s research.
COM provides funding typically 2 out of 3 years. My fellowship year happened to be an award year and I was given the opportunity to observe the review process from a front row seat as well as try to find appropriate reviewers. It gave me an appreciation for the the time and commitment the reviewers provided during a period where everyone was stretched thin due to the COVID pandemic.
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