Earlier this month, the White House announced the establishment of a new website, climate.data.gov, created to educate Americans about climate change and its widespread detrimental impacts. It was created under the supervision of John D. Podesta, President Obama’s counselor, and John P. Holdren, the White House’s science advisor.

The goal of this website is to inform the public about the importance of climate change problems and to increase awareness. The ability to bring the relevance of such environmental problems to a local scale will hopefully make the concept of climate change more applicable to the individual. In its “pilot” stage, the website will include topics related to coastal flooding and sea level rise, along with the past and potential impacts of these phenomenas. This webpage is planning to expand these topics to include additional climate-related impacts, such as human health, energy supply, and energy infrastructure.

The website provides the tools, data, and information that can eventually be converted into software stimulations by research and private companies. Companies who plan to use this newly available climate data include Google and Esri. This web page will include numerous digital and interactive maps in order to present the data in an engaging and informative manner. For example, the site includes post-Sandy maps for New York and New Jersey that show how the floodplain will change if sea levels rise to certain levels.

This webpage has the potential to help make predictions, raise awareness, and manage risks regarding climate change. As the engineering manager of Google earth puts it, “what if we could make information about sea-level rise, extreme heat and drought as simple to digest and interactive as sung Google Maps to get directions?” This site has the potential to bring us a step closer to that.