The training courses here can help you acquire the tools, skills, and knowledge you need to manage your climate-related risks and opportunities. All courses are free of charge, and are offered in at least one of three formats: online audio-visual presentations ("Online, Self-Guided" and "Tool Tutorial"), training webinars ("Online, Scheduled Lecture Series"), and residence training courses ("Onsite, Instructor-Led"). Each training module is accompanied with a test to help you evaluate your knowledge. These courses feature scientific information adapted from authoritative sources, prepared by recognized subject matter experts. The courses have been pilot tested with users and other subject matter experts and may be updated periodically, as needed.
To plan successfully, communities need to understand the options for addressing flood-related issues and their associated costs. This guide lays out a six-step watershed-based approach for documenting the costs of flooding, projecting increased flooding and associated costs under future land use and climate conditions, and calculating the long-term benefits and costs of a green infrastructure approach. The guide draws from four case studies (Duluth, Minnesota; Toledo, Ohio; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and He‘eia, Hawaii) to provide key considerations, recommended expertise, practical implementation tips, and lessons learned.
Coastal communities increasingly realize the need for adaptation strategies, but many are unsure where to begin. Attend this two-day, instructor-led course to gain a thorough grounding and practical skills for incorporating adaptation strategies into planning processes. Time in class is provided to practice applying what you’ve learned, and opportunities for local collaboration and next steps are emphasized through discussion, participant activities, and local speakers and examples. The course is designed for planners, public works staff, floodplain managers, hazard mitigation planners, sustainability managers, emergency managers, community groups, members of civic organizations, and coastal resource managers. Participants are eligible for continuing education credits through the American Institute of Certified Planners and Certified Floodplain Manager (CFM) professional certifications.
Developed for stormwater and floodplain managers, as well as land use planners, this interactive website incorporates tools and methods to derive critical coastal water-level thresholds, as well as assess the potential impacts of exceeding those thresholds on stormwater infrastructure. Managers can take various actions to address the issue, and this guide introduces planning, policy, on-the-ground, and funding options.
This three-day residence training course provides advanced knowledge in climate modeling, downscaling, attribution of extreme weather and water events to climate, and approaches and tools for developing local climate studies.
These two videos serve as an introduction to the Downscaled Climate and Hydrology Projections website. This website, the result of a collaboration between several federal and non-federal partners, provides access to downscaled climate and hydrology projections for the contiguous United States and parts of Canada and Mexico, derived from contemporary global climate models. In the first video, a hydrologic engineer at the Bureau of Reclamation's Technical Service Center, in Denver, introduces the website and provides an overview of the MetEd lesson: Preparing Hydro-climate Inputs for Climate Change in Water Resources Planning. This lesson provides background information needed to use the projections site effectively to retrieve climate and hydrology projections data for impacts analysis. In the second video, another lecturer steps through the process of retrieving projections data using the website.
The purpose of ARSOC is to provide baseline knowledge to personnel without Arctic experience, focusing on historical, environmental, commercial, geopolitical, and strategic issues concerning the Arctic region in order to encourage discussion, intellectual curiosity, and critical thinking.
Many communities struggle with how to prepare for hazards. It can be difficult to talk about vulnerability to hazards, and it can be even more difficult to keep people engaged and motivated to take action. This training provides insights into how and why people respond to risk, and helps participants develop new skills to better connect with a variety of audiences. Understanding and connecting with an audience’s diverse values and concerns can lead to a higher level of community engagement and can help motivate action to reduce risk. You will learn how to recognize differing values, and identify how and why people perceive and respond to risks the way they do; apply social science and risk communication principles when faced with challenging questions; respond to difficult questions with more confidence; and develop an effective risk communication strategy that incorporates relevant and proven principles.
This engaging, asynchronous e-learning course will help you discover key climate terms and mechanisms, prepare you with essential knowledge about hazards impacting your community and industry, and introduce you to effective adaptation and mitigation strategies at regional, national, and international levels. This 1.5-hour course is tailored to your location and industry and equips you to make a real impact in your field.
Building awareness of future climate hazards and impacts that the emergency services sector may face is very important. This course helps emergency services and the community better prepare for the climate adaptations necessary and systems vulnerabilities that may occur from hazard impacts. Participants will be able to describe the principles of climate adaptation planning for emergency management and existing first response processes and will be able to discuss the impact of weather on critical infrastructure and key resources while explaining the concurrent effects of climate change on those impacts. Participants will also gain an understanding of how to identify and apply adaptation strategies to address local emergency services sector vulnerabilities. The course is also designed to provide opportunities for participants to learn about various resources that can be used to implement local climate adaptation strategies in their communities.
The goal of this course is to prepare the community and the emergency services sector for the climate adaptations and systems vulnerabilities that might occur from hazard impacts and to enhance awareness to future climate hazards and impacts that the emergency services sector may face.
This module discusses how a changing climate can lead to changes in extreme weather events on the local scale. The role of natural variability is also explained. The module describes how climate change can have both positive and negative effects, depending on the situation, location, and the vulnerability of the population. While research on the relationships between climate change and extreme events is still relatively new, the module discusses what changes scientists think are likely to happen if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
This module is an overview of the different effects climate change produces in different regions of the United States. In addition to discussing impacts already being experienced, the module presents information on how climate scientists use specialized models and statistical techniques to estimate how regional climates are likely to change in the future.
This module looks at how increasing temperatures due to climate change have affected sea level rise and what effects scientists expect in the future, given rising greenhouse gas emissions. The various mechanisms of sea level rise are discussed, as well as the tools and research used to study this topic. The module also discusses how countries and communities are preparing for future increases in sea levels
This is the second in a series of three climate education modules created for natural resources professionals. This module explores current and projected climate effects on water resources, vegetation, wildlife, and disturbances for forest and grassland ecosystems. The modules were created using a curriculum developed by the Forest Service's Office of Sustainability and Climate and the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science.
This is the first in a series of three climate educations modules created for natural resources professionals. This module gives an overview of climate change science, including information about the climate system, greenhouse gases, climate models, current climate impacts, and future projections. The modules were created using a curriculum developed by the Forest Service's Office of Sustainability and Climate and the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science.
This module discusses global climate change and the role of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases emitted by human activities. It also covers signs of climate change, how scientists study climate, scientists’ current thinking on future changes, and what can be done to minimize the effects.
The Climate Learning Network's eLearning program is designed to help Extension professionals, professional crop advisors, and professional foresters incorporate climate change into their existing program areas and become climate literate. Many modules offer Continuing Education Credits from the Society of American Foresters (SAF) and Certified Crop Advisors (CCA). Modules topics include basic climate science, communication, climate variability, vulnerability assessments, agricultural adaptation practices, and resilient land management.
This site offers 13 recorded presentations from the 29 July–2 August, 2013 offering of the Climate Variability and Change Virtual Course (CVCVC). This five-day live facilitated online course provided an extensive background on a range of climate variability and change topics with an emphasis on developing communication skills for challenging climate topics. The topics covered in this course, while aimed primarily at NOAA operational climate services delivery staff will also be helpful for others who already possess a basic level of understanding of climate science.
This course will build on the first course of the series, Coastal Hazards Awareness, by supplementing the awareness knowledge with tools and skills for practical use. The one-day, performance-level training course provides training on available tools for the assessment and planning for natural hazards and vulnerabilities that uniquely affect coastal communities. Examples of these hazards include short-term events such as high surf, storm surge, and tsunami inundation or long-term threats from sea level rise and coastal erosion. The goal of this course is to enable participants to identify methods and considerations for assessing hazards and vulnerabilities of coastal communities, compare and select sources and methods for collecting coastal hazard and vulnerability data, and utilize available web-based tools to conduct a preliminary hazard and vulnerability assessment in their community.
This one-day, awareness-level training course aims to increase the awareness of the hazards facing coastal communities and basic strategies to reduce the risk to those hazards. This course provides training on the basic science of, assessment of, and preparedness for natural hazards and risks that uniquely affect coastal communities. Examples of these hazards are short-term events such as high surf, storm surge, and tsunami inundation or long-term threats from sea level rise and coastal erosion.
This two-day instructor-led course offers a combination of lectures and hands-on exercises to give students a better understanding of coastal inundation issues and mapping methods using a geographic information system (GIS). This course has been designed to: understand the types of inundation; learn about products and terminology; access data; perform datum conversions; understand interpolation methods and create DEMS; explore water level data; and map inundation using GIS. In hands-on exercises, students connect to web map services, access elevation data, convert between vertical datums, create and manage digital elevation models, map inundation model output, develop inundation zones, and map sea level rise using modeled tidal surfaces.
The Coastal Resilience Center of the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus is funded by the Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence with a mission focused on education of the community by transferring state-of-practice knowledge through formal and informal learning experiences to help the community understand coastal infrastructure hazard prevention, preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation. Training courses for Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands are programmed and announced monthly.
The National Estuarine Research Reserves, a network of 29 coastal sites along U.S. Coasts and the Great Lakes, host a range of education, outreach, and training opportunities through their Coastal Training Programs. The overarching goal of these programs is to provide current science and skill-building opportunities for decision-makers in coastal communities. The Coastal Training Programs increase audience understanding of the environmental, social, economic, and policy consequences of human activities, and facilitates coordination among stakeholders to support evidence-based policies and actions.
Each Reserve’s program is different, and many sites host trainings related to resilience and climate change. Some sites have the flexibility to meet the needs of specific decision makers at specific times by organizing or developing custom trainings for local or regional decision makers. Reserves also frequently host the NOAA Digital Coast trainings.
To access training opportunities, or find contact information for program coordinators, select a reserve from the national map. View the Reserve page, and then go to the Reserve Website (under Important Links). Check the Reserve Website for Training, Education, and Outreach opportunities.
This course demonstrates how to integrate risk and community-based collaborative strategies into plans and programs and introduces tools that help communities assess individual risks and vulnerabilities, as well as strategies, to become more resilient and better prepared for natural disasters. The one-day training course provides state and local government agency staff and other stakeholder groups with background on natural hazards. In addition, the course will guide an approach to (1) assess community resilience, and (2) develop next steps for improved resilience. The course is designed for national implementation while allowing integration of local concerns through case studies and focused group exercises.
This workshop process—developed through The Nature Conservancy's Coastal Resilience network (coastalresilience.org)—fosters collaboration with and among community stakeholders to advance education, planning, and ultimately implementation of priority resilience actions. The freely downloadable Workshop Guide provides instructions on how to lead your community towards resilience, illustrating the essentials of the process as well as “before” and “after” workshop steps to help ensure that immediate goals, outcomes, and strategic direction are realized within your community. Also available from the website are workshop support materials, including a risk matrix, invitation language, community survey questions, and suggestions for participant affiliations.
Each interaction with your audience provides a powerful opportunity to learn about that group and share information about coastal hazard risks. This quick reference worksheet leads you through the planning process of how to identify and engage your primary audience, and provides examples of how others are approaching this task.
NASA POWER offers solar and meteorological data sets for support of renewable energy, building energy efficiency, and agricultural needs. This session provides a brief review of the NASA Prediction of Worldwide renewable Energy Resources (POWER) Project web services, tools, and key partnerships that facilitate usage of NASA Earth Observations (EOs) data. Then, illustrative case studies of how POWER data are used for applications in solar energy, wind energy, and energy efficiency will be discussed in depth.
This awareness-level, four-hour course provides participants with a general understanding of the risks associated with natural hazards and disasters, introduces methods of assessing that risk to vulnerable small businesses, and describes the business continuity planning process to help small businesses prepare for, plan for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from any natural hazard or disaster that may occur. Modules include instruction on identifying hazards to business operations through risk assessment and identifying financial disaster assistance programs and business interruption insurance programs.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's National Conservation Training Center is consolidating training opportunities for FWS staff to increase knowledge of climate science and climate change as they relate to resource management. Participants can examine how to refocus their conservation efforts by applying the Strategic Habitat Conservation framework from local to landscape scale through biological planning, conservation design, conservation delivery, decision-based monitoring, and assumption-driven research. Participants will become familiar with new emerging tools, such as structured decision making, adaptive resource management, predictive modeling, and population viability analysis. There are several growing training opportunities available through the NCTC, including instructor-led, online courses and self-paced online training courses. Web conferences are held monthly to get up-to-date information to those needing it and communicating new tools, plans, and approaches in the face of climate change. In addition to formal training and webinars, there are many resources to help you build your knowledge and appreciation of climate science, climate change, global warming, and resources management strategies being developed and implemented to deal with the changing conditions brought on by climate change.
This course provides tools to design and implement productive meetings. Participants will learn basic facilitation skills and techniques for dealing with disruptive behaviors. Class time is provided to practice using tools and skills to plan and facilitate meetings that accomplish objectives while minimizing conflict. Participants at every level are welcome, since the new skills will be useful even when attending, but not running, a meeting. You will learn how to facilitate meetings effectively, use appropriate process tools and techniques to reach the meeting objectives, and identify disruptive behaviors in group processes and practice strategies to deal with them.
Flooding hazards can threaten any community in any location in the United States. Flooding can occur over a period of weeks or days, or minutes, thus this course focuses the identification and assessment of hazards due to flooding to enable proper preparedness and response. As flooding is one of the top meteorological killers in the United States, and poses particular hazards to emergency responders, this introduction to recognizing flooding threats is essential for developing safe communities.
Flooding Hazards: Science and Preparedness is an awareness-level, eight-hour course that addresses the current science of the causes of floods (both meteorological and otherwise), flood forecasting, flood risk assessment, and best practices for preparation and mitigation for both short- and long-fuse flooding events. Key concepts and discussion topics will be reinforced with facilitator-led group activities that utilize real-world flood scenarios. These activities will illustrate the diverse challenges and complexities that can occur during actual flood events while building participants' experience and confidence in anticipating, heeding warnings, and responding to floods.
This is an active, hands-on training to help natural resources managers incorporate climate change considerations into their own real-world ecosystem management projects (not only forests). Participants are guided through the steps of the Adaptation Workbook to define their management objectives, identify relevant regional and local effects of climate change on forest ecosystems, identify challenges and opportunities for management, and develop actionable steps to adapt ecosystems to changing conditions. Participants are encouraged to access post-training support from the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science, and to share their stories online as “adaptation demonstrations” at www.forestadaptation.org.
This series consists of two recorded webinars that intend to build foundational knowledge about funding and financing approaches used to support coastal resilience activities. Learn from experts, who will demystify this complex topic by sharing traditional and emerging approaches, project examples, and lessons learned. The first webinar explores options for funding and financing coastal resilience projects and provides the foundation for future trainings on this topic. The second webinar discusses the use of Environmental Impact Bonds to finance coastal resilience efforts. Experts provide an overview of these bonds, how one was developed to finance coastal resilience efforts in Hampton, Virginia, and lessons learned throughout the process.
An ArcGIS Tutorial Series to help users apply the geographic approach for climate resilience planning. Using a climate resilience planning process—the Steps to Resilience documented in the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit—this curriculum is designed to help you use geographic information systems to document climate hazards that could harm the people and places you care about, decide which situations you most want to avoid, and come up with workable solutions to reduce your climate-related risks.
This collection of quick references can help you find, prepare, and submit federal grant applications. Learning Outcomes from this training include: (1) Understand how to read the critical components of a federal notice of funding opportunity (NOFO); (2) Identify the key items needed to develop a competitive grant proposal; (3) Outline your own grant proposal using a worksheet with guidance to draft your project goals, plan, budget, and outreach
Communities experiencing increasing incidents of coastal flooding are looking for relief. This online guide shows spatial analysts how to incorporate nature-based solutions, or green infrastructure, into their GIS work. A GIS work plan is provided, along with examples, process guidance, case studies, and templates.
The practices described in this handout can be used to reduce flooding and help communities design a green infrastructure strategy. It should be noted that while green infrastructure practices make communities more resilient, flooding might not be totally alleviated. Topics explored in this training include green infrastructure practices, considerations for planning and implementation, and guidance on estimating storage potential and costs. This document is a companion piece to the NOAA's Process Guide for Assessing Costs and Benefits of Green Infrastructure for Flood Mitigation.
