George Mason University will host the Virginia State Climate Office. The Commonwealth has been without such a department for a long time.
The University of Virginia last hosted the office – which serves as a conduit for climate-related services coming out of the federal government and regional partners.
The state’s office was largely inactive for about two decades mostly due to a lack of dedicated funding. Virginia was one of only two states in the whole country without an active climate office during that time.
But that has now changed – according to Luis Ortiz, co-director of the Virginia Climate Center at George Mason University. While it doesn’t have a budgetary component, the General Assembly did pass legislation this year that sought to reactivate the office at GMU.
Ortiz says it is vital to have such an entity, as the state has been seeing impacts from a warming climate – extreme rain and heat events, in addition to extended periods of drought. Virginia has also been working with some data that is very old.
“The systems that we have built use climate information from decades ago – in many cases, over a hundred years ago," Ortiz says. "Virginia has very, very old cities.”
Ortiz adds that states are in a position where they will have to step up…
“…as federal support for climate-related resilience and action has dropped," he says. "I’m not saying that’s going to be the case forever, but that is kind of the case right now.”
The Climate Office is already up and running – working with other state agencies and regional partners to document Virginia’s climate and share timely information with the public.
