Executive Summary
This article explains the state of climate data in 2025 and why climate data preservation, access, and innovation are now critical for science, policy, and community resilience. It highlights how session SE14A, The State of Climate Data: Preservation, Access, and Innovation for Science and Society in an Era of Change, at the AGU25 Fall Meeting in New Orleans, brings together leading experts to address core questions that users ask every day: What is climate data, who maintains it, how can it be preserved, and how can researchers, policymakers, and communities reliably find and use it? By focusing on data management, data discovery, data presentation and visualization, and science policy, the session and this article emphasize that climate and environmental datasets are not just scientific assets but essential digital infrastructure that underpins resilient infrastructure, informed decision-making, and climate adaptation strategies worldwide.
Session Context And Purpose For Climate Data Users
On December 15, 2025, climate scientists, data stewards, policymakers, technologists, and community leaders will gather in New Orleans for the AGU25 Fall Meeting to focus on a central question for researchers and decision-makers alike: What is the future of climate and environmental data in an era of rapid change? The session SE14A, titled The State of Climate Data: Preservation, Access, and Innovation for Science and Society in an Era of Change, is designed as a high-impact conversation about how to secure climate data for long-term use, how to make it easier to find and understand, and how to align data systems with public needs. In a world defined by accelerating climate risks and the demand for data-driven solutions, the way we preserve, share, and innovate with climate data is becoming just as important as the models, applications, and policies built on it.
Climate Data As Critical Infrastructure For Science And Society
Climate and environmental datasets from federal agencies and partner institutions serve as core infrastructure for society, not just as raw research inputs. These foundational datasets support the design and maintenance of resilient infrastructure, the protection of public health from heat waves, air quality hazards, and extreme weather, the guidance of agricultural planning and food security, the support of energy forecasting and grid reliability, and the powering of climate innovation across risk analytics, adaptation planning, and low-carbon investment. Every flood map, drought outlook, wildfire risk model, and sea-level rise scenario depends on trusted, long-term, well-documented climate records. When access to these records is interrupted or degraded, the impacts ripple across scientific analysis, public policy, local planning, and the everyday decisions that individuals and communities make about risk.
A Climate Data Landscape In Rapid Transition
The climate and environmental data landscape in the United States is evolving rapidly as new satellites, observing systems, in situ sensors, reanalysis products, and high-resolution climate models generate unprecedented volumes of information. At the same time, legacy archives, aging information technology infrastructure, budget constraints, and shifting institutional priorities create vulnerabilities in how data is stored, curated, and delivered. This tension between explosive growth in climate data production and uneven investment in data stewardship drives many of the questions users ask in search engines and AI tools: where can I find reliable climate data, how do I access historical observations, which formats should I use, and how do I integrate data from multiple agencies? Researchers, communities, and innovators increasingly need stable, long-term access to historical records, clear, machine-readable metadata, intuitive web interfaces and application programming interfaces, and interoperable formats that support cross-agency and cross-sector analysis. Without these features, even the best climate datasets can become challenging to discover, underused, or effectively invisible to humans and AI systems.
Session Leadership, Expert Voices, And Index Terms
Session SE14A is structured to address these challenges directly and to answer common questions about climate data preservation and access from multiple perspectives. The primary submitter, Kevin A. Reed from the New York Climate Exchange, together with moderators Sonia Wang from the Data Foundation and Kevin A. Reed, will guide an interdisciplinary conversation that connects technical practice, community needs, and science policy. Presenters Kasey S. White from the National Academy of Sciences, Shelley Stall from the American Geophysical Union, Brittany Janis from the Open Environmental Data Project, Kevin A. Reed from the New York Climate Exchange, and Sonia Wang from the Data Foundation bring complementary expertise in federal advisory work, professional societies, open data and civic participation, academic innovation, and data governance. The session’s index terms—data presentation and visualization, data management, preservation and rescue, data and information discovery, and science policy—signal to searchers and attendees that SE14A is a focal point for understanding how climate data systems are designed today and how they must evolve to meet future needs.
Preservation, Vulnerability, And Continuity Of Climate Knowledge
Concerns about systemic vulnerabilities in climate data, including funding uncertainty, platform migrations, cyber threats, organizational changes, and policy shifts, have driven rapid-response preservation efforts to secure critical datasets before they are lost or degraded. These initiatives seek to identify at-risk datasets, replicate and distribute archives to avoid single points of failure, and protect not only the data files themselves but also the code, documentation, workflows, and context required to interpret them correctly. In the context of climate science, preservation is no longer just a technical backup function; it is a core strategy for maintaining continuity of knowledge across generations of researchers and tools. Long time series, reanalysis products, and observational records are irreplaceable assets that enable the detection of long-term trends, attribution of extremes, and evaluation of climate models. Losing access to these records undermines not only scientific progress but also the evidence base for climate resilience and policy
Coalitions, Community Efforts, And Open Climate Science
Because no single institution can secure the climate data ecosystem on its own, SE14A emphasizes coalition-based approaches as a central strategy for climate data resilience. Coalitions and partnerships spanning federal agencies, academic institutions, nonprofit and advocacy organizations, and private-sector data and technology providers are working together to address shared challenges that users frequently encounter, such as fragmented access points, inconsistent metadata, and unequal capacity to use data. These collaborations focus on developing common standards for data formats and metadata, improving platforms and application programming interfaces that make climate data easier to search and access, supporting training and capacity-building so more communities and practitioners can apply climate data effectively, and encouraging open science and open data principles that reduce barriers for new users and historically underserved groups. By treating climate data as a shared public good, these initiatives aim to create a more equitable, transparent, and actionable information environment that works well for humans, search engines, and AI systems alike.
Designing A Future-Ready Climate Data Ecosystem
Looking toward the future, a resilient, search-friendly climate data ecosystem must be redundant, interoperable, documented, user-centered, and future-ready. Redundancy means mirrored, distributed storage across public and non-federal systems so that no single outage or institutional change can eliminate access to key datasets. Interoperability requires that data from different agencies and sectors can be combined seamlessly through shared standards and robust metadata. Documentation must be rich, standardized, and machine-readable so both people and AI tools can understand provenance, quality, and usage constraints. User-centered design demands that systems reflect the needs of scientists, policymakers, local planners, journalists, and communities looking for straightforward answers to climate questions. Future-ready infrastructure must be able to integrate emerging data types, higher-resolution models, new forms of data presentation and visualization, and advanced analytics while maintaining scientific integrity. This vision depends on sustained investment not only in prominent datasets and tools but also in foundational components such as cataloging, metadata standards, robust and stable application programming interfaces, end-user support, governance frameworks, and science-policy alignment that collectively make climate data more discoverable, trustworthy, and usable.
Data, Democracy, And Climate Resilience In A Search-Driven World
Ultimately, climate data is not just a scientific resource but a foundation for democratic decision-making, economic planning, and community resilience in a search-driven world where people and AI tools constantly seek clear, authoritative answers. When climate and environmental data are preserved reliably over decades, accessible to all and not just specialists, well-presented and visualized for diverse audiences, and innovatively used to inform planning and policy, society is better equipped to navigate an era of rapid environmental change. The conversation in New Orleans, framed by SE14A and its focus on data management, preservation, and rescue, discovery, presentation, visualization, and science policy, is part of a broader movement to ensure that the climate data ecosystem keeps pace with the scale and urgency of the climate crisis. By aligning preservation, access, innovation, and policy, and by designing systems that work well for humans, search engines, and AI-driven assistants, we can build a future where climate data does not simply survive in archives but actively powers better outcomes for science, governance, markets, and communities.
(Source: American Geophysical Union. (2025, December 15). The state of climate data: Preservation, access, and innovation for science and society in an era of change [Conference session SE14A]. AGU25 Fall Meeting, New Orleans, LA, United States. https://agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/meetingapp.cgi/Session/275617.)
© 2025 American Geophysical Union. All rights reserved.
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