New York, Dec 12 (IANS): NASA has offered $35,000 in prizes to create apps which use US climate data. The contest, called the Climate Resilience Data Challenge in partnership with the US Geological Survey (USGS), offers prizes to citizen scientists for ideas that will help the United States cope with climate change.

It is open from Dec 15 till March 2015.

The US faces a number of challenges as the result of climate change, coastal flooding and weather-related hazards that threaten lives and property, increased disruptions to agriculture, prolonged drought that adversely affects food security and water availability and ocean acidification capable of damaging ecosystems and biodiversity.

Using climate data to address these and other climate risks, is what the challenge hopes to address.

"We need tools that utilize federal data to help our local communities improve climate resilience, protect our ecosystems and prepare for the effects of climate change," said Kevin Murphy from NASA Earth Science Data Systems.