The concept is quite simple: create a climate services system that supports local governments by strengthening existing climate services within each state, connecting those resources, and filling in the gaps.

Our goal is to create an effective system of climate services so that all communities, no matter their location, wealth, or size, can access the help they need to build climate resilience – both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate impacts.

• Local Communities: The primary user of the support services made available through this program
• Climate Innovation Centers: Unique statewide entities that provide direct support to local communities by connecting them with climate service resources from state and federal government, academic institutions, and climate organizations (Learn more about these centers here)
• Regional Support Teams: Expert teams that support state level Climate Innovation Centers on issues, such as implementation finance, community engagement, social equity, climate science, and nature-based solutions
• National Strategy Team: Central organizing entity that coordinates between the Federal System and Regional Teams
• Federal System: Tools, resources, and experts within the federal agencies whose work intersects with climate resilience

Overview Summary

You can read more about how we envision this system will function in this document: Climate Ready America: What It Requires

Sign On Letters

• On July 25, 2023 we submitted comments to FEMA on the Community Disaster Resilience Zones (CDRZ) Act, where we encourage FEMA to develop an initiative that not only supports CDRZ communities, but eventually can also help build resilience in the remaining 99% of census tracts across the nation. 
• On December 5, 2022 we submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency on their Greenhouse Gas Reduction fund. Seventy organizations and individuals signed on in support of these comments.

To get announcements for future sign on letter efforts, sign up for our enews.

We have 55 in-state partners ready to go once funding arrives. These partners represent a variety of entity types:

• 7 State governments
• 15 Extension/Sea Grant offices
• 10 Non-land-grant Universities
• 15 Nonprofit organizations
• 3 Regional Planning Commissions/Councils
• 2 For-profit service entities
• 2 State climatologist ofices
• 1 CASC

Climate Innovation Center Pilot Program

We selected five states or statewide organizations to pilot Climate Innovation Centers.  This pilot program will show proof of concept and provide support to determine how states with different circumstances can be served by the same system.  
  
Rapid nationwide expansion of the Climate Ready America system involves immediately applying what is learned in this first pilot phase to the next round of pilots and then to building out to the remaining states (and possibly territories) over the next five years. The challenge of climate change requires this level of ambition. 

We are no longer accepting proposals for the 2022 pilot program but are accepting Letters of Interest for the next round. 

General Interest

To receive periodic updates on, and invitations to be involved with, the development of Climate Ready America, sign up here

Climate Innovation Center Pilot Program

Visit our Pilot Program information page to learn more. Contact Kim Adams (kim@geosinstitute.org) for questions about the pilot program. 

Partnerships

Climate Ready America will be built through partnerships. If you have resources or thoughts about collaborations that could help develop this system, please contact Kim Adams (kim@geosinstitute.org).

Advisors are individuals/organizations that are advising the Climate Ready America system on a variety of topics from structure and governance to system design, programmatic content, partnership opportunities, etc. Their advice will be solicited throughout the process of developing the system.

Steve Abbott, Rocky Mountain Institute
James Arnott, Aspen Global Change Institute
Michael Berkowitz, Resilient Cities Catalyst
Tim Carter, Second Nature
John Cleveland, Innovation Network for Communities
Joyce Coffee, Climate Resilience Consulting
Ernest Cook, Network for Landscape Conservation
Nancy Gilliam, Model Forest Policy Program – Climate Solutions University
Matt Hutchins, Fernleaf
Rachel Jacobson, American Society of Adaptation Professionals
Michael McCormick, Farallon Strategies
Susi Moser, Susanne Moser Consulting
John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State Climatologist, Director, Southern Regional Climate Center
Sascha Petersen, Adaptation International
Cara Pike, Climate Access

Background & History

Our Geos Institute team has been working on this question of climate services since 2015 when we co-led an effort to create a Climate Adaptation Service Bureau. Unfortunately sidelined by anti-climate positions of the administration and Congress, that effort spawned the Climate Adaptation Registry and influenced the structure of our Climate Ready Communities assisted-do-it yourself planning model.  

With the transition in 2020 of federal leadership to those who understand the threat and urgency of the climate crisis, we turned our attention back to developing climate services nationwide. Since late 2020, we have:  

• Worked with adaptation practitioners across the field to develop the Climate Ready America concept, identify existing programmatic anchors, and chart next steps (See our original concept paper) 
• Convened a team of leading adaptation practitioners to develop ten guiding principles of such a system (see the press release here)
• Researched existing climate change service programs in all fifty US states  
• Began identifying possible funding and states to pilot Climate Innovation Centers
• Developed a detailed design of Climate Ready America