Climate Science Support Platform (CSSP)

The Climate Science Support Platform (CSSP) is a network of NC CASC scientists and partners that provides climate science support to the NC CASC community of scientists and stakeholders through collaborative research and integration of diverse science expertise.

How does the CSSP work?

CSSP facilitates iterative engagement with the NC CASC community of scientists and stakeholders to increase understanding of climate science and to identify stakeholders’ climate science needs. This process includes:

  • Direct interactions with stakeholders
  • Specific project-based interactions
  • Science calls of the CSSP network
  • Science webinars that bring together researchers and managers

CSSP produces information and tools based on identified needs across a wide range of stakeholders and projects. This includes:

  • Developing and providing downscaled climate data
  • Synthesizing project specific climate information (e.g. the climate summaries produced for US FWS species assessments)
  • Developing workflows to access climate data (e.g., the Climate Futures Toolbox) or derive a specific climate metric at the appropriate scale
  • Assessing usability of developed information and tools through direct stakeholder  engagement
  • Developing resource briefs and regional summaries 

CSSP is also doing foundational and applied research in understanding ecological drought processes and risk under a changing climate. These include:

  • Collaborations with NOAA’s Physical Climate Laboratory for developing and maintaining drought indices such as the Evaporative Demand Drought Index and the Landscape Evaporative Response Index
  • Development of the Drought Index Portal (DrIP) to provide easy access and ability to generate and compare different drought indices for a selected location in the contiguous United States
  • Ecological drought research on changing drought risk during the 21st century and how transformational drought processes could manifest within the NC CASC region 

Select stakeholders with whom CSSP has had significant interactions include:

Select projects and efforts supported by CSSP include: