Web-based services provided by four NOAA regional climate centers have come back online after the Commerce Department last week allowed government contracts with the centers’ host universities to lapse.
The affected facilities — housed at Purdue University; the University of Nebraska; the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Texas A&M University — are among six regional climate centers that host websites that help citizens, businesses and organizations understand and prepare for weather or climate events.
The centers shut down their online information portals at midnight Thursday after being informed their contracts with the National Centers for Environmental Information and National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service had expired, according to officials at two of the centers.
“We turned off our website and put a message up that says our service lapsed,” William Schmitz, service climatologist/meteorologist at the Southeast Regional Climate Center housed at the University of North Carolina’s Department of Geography and Environment, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “We have a tool called Climate Perspectives that’s widely used by the National Weather Service and many other organizations. We had to just turn it off.”
