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Part III. Appendix 4: User OutreachCLIMATE CHANGETeam Members: Mike McCann (MBARI) and Margaret Srinivasan (JPL)IntroductionAnother stated goal of the Integrated Ocean Observing System is to improve predictions of climatechange and its effects on coastal populations. The composition of this community of data usersincludes research scientists, modelers, climatologists, GIS data system users, and policy makers,particularly in coastal communities. This last group of users includes city governments, harbordistricts, port authorities, county and state governments, planning commissions, and consultants.Global and long-term climate considerations are of particular interest to this user community. Asan example, coastal development proposals in the Monterey Bay, California area must take into accountexpected sea level rise due to global warning estimates. Better data and improved access todata can improve these estimates.For climate change research, the top priority is having high-accuracy data that are consistent forlong-time-series data sets. Understanding the implications for long-term archiving of data as thetechnology advances is also a key element in successful data management and usage. Both data andmetadata must be updated to reflect the current best solution to most effectively manage the delicatebalance among new technology, existing hardware resources, and personnel resources, not onlyfor current research but for archiving and storage as well. Solutions should endeavor to be as system-independentas possible, while realizing that other constraints may exist. Evaluating the statusof data holdings should be a continuous process .The issue of metadata is also an important element, primarily to data managers, but also to datausers. The science that comes from the data is the ultimate resource for the research effort, but theease in data management affects every phase of climate change research from acquisition to scientificresults.Issues1. Data Accuracy: Future mission requirements should incorporate improved data accuracy.Sometimes there is a trade-off between data accuracy vs. data latency. Sufficient resources needto include research and re-processing efforts that would improve the quality and accuracy ofdata measurements.234