The future of the global water cycle in general, and specifically the prediction of freshwater availability for humans around the world remain among the frontiers of climate research and are related to several UN Sustainable Development Goals. Especially the prediction of precipitation, which is the product of a complex integrated system, remain problematic. Improving precipitation predictions requires improved observations and modeling of all critical processes in the coupled earth system. The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) will launch the Global Precipitation EXperiment (GPEX) as a new Lighthouse Activity during the WCRP Open Science Conference in October 2023, to take on the challenge of improving precipitation predictions around the world. GPEX will be a cross-WCRP initiative centralized around the WCRP Years of Precipitation (YoP) and associated activities before and after. The YoP will include coordinated global field campaigns with an emphasis on different storm types for different seasons (atmospheric rivers in winter, springtime mesoscale convective systems, summer monsoons, and tropical cyclones in the fall), gridded data evaluation and analysis, km-scale modeling, process understanding, and prediction of extreme precipitation events as well as changes in precipitation seasonality. GPEX activities will take 5-10 years to complete through three (Pre-YoP, YoP, and Post-YoP) phases. Through this Townhall, we intend to inform the community of this exciting opportunity, seek community input on the Science Plan and its Implementation, and seek potential leaders to coordinate global field campaigns on different storm types, and/or to coordinate major precipitation related datasets, and modeling and prediction experiments.

NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) works to observe our Earth environment and support NOAA’s enhanced climate services by delivering a robust observations and data system. Through working with international, interagency, and industry partners NESDIS is harnessing technological advances in satellites and data science. NESDIS leadership will outline how the organization is approaching challenges in an increasingly complex operational environment to develop effective and impactful products and services with intentional user centric design. Planning for the next generation LEO, GEO and space weather observation capabilities is well underway. A common ground service framework is being developed to provide a flexible, scalable platform for secure data ingest in different formats from different partners. NESDIS invites the community to join in this discussion.

Leaders of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will convene this town hall to discuss progress toward key priorities over the last year, including 1) BIL and IRA activities 2) building a Climate Ready Nation 3) establishing a balance between economic development and environmental stewardship, and 4) workforce and equity. The NOAA Administrator, Dr. Rick Spinrad, will be speaking, as well as leaders from each of NOAA’s six Line Offices. With the passage of key pieces of legislation, NOAA is headed in exciting directions. Come hear where NOAA is headed!

Space weather is a naturally occurring phenomenon that can disrupt the technology that forms the backbone of this country’s economic vitality and national security, including the electric power grid, satellite and airline operations, communications networks, and navigation systems. With Solar Cycle 25 expected to peak in 2024-2025, strategic direction and continued coordination across the space weather enterprise is essential for preparedness and resilience. 

In 2014 the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) chartered the Space Weather Operations, Research, and Mitigation (SWORM) Task Force (and subsequent Subcommittee) to coordinate the Federal government and develop a National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan to address this risk (released in 2015 and updated in 2019).

In October 2020, Congress passed the Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow (PROSWIFT) Act that directed NOAA to stand up the non-governmental Space Weather Advisory Group (SWAG) to advise SWORM.

In June 2022, SWORM advised SWAG of the impending update to the National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan and tasked SWAG to provide critical community input. In response, SWAG members developed the report – Findings and Recommendations to Successfully Implement PROSWIFT and Transform the National Space Weather Enterprise, released in April 2023. The report was informed by broad community input through the SWAG Public January 2023 hybrid meeting that featured a series of speakers, panels, and inputs from the public.

This town hall will address the SWAG report and the SWORM response to it by detailing the newly released SWORM National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan - Implementation Plan. The Implementation Plan will provide the key elements necessary to improve our understanding, prediction capability, and preparedness efforts to enhance the Nation’s resilience against space-weather.

This Town Hall will update the community on opportunities for Tropical Pacific field campaigns to support the Tropical Pacific Observing System (TPOS), and advance the goals of NOAA’s Precipitation Prediction Grand Challenge and the WCRP Global Precipitation Experiment. We will discuss upcoming process studies in the Tropical Pacific, TPOS implementation, and their key roles in supporting national and international initiatives. This is an opportunity to share NOAA program science plans with the broader science community, encourage community and other agency engagement, and enhance national and international collaborations. NOAA’s programs invite collaborations with the science community, other agencies, and international partners. NOAA Climate Variability and Predictability Program supports research for process studies: Pacific Upwelling and Mixing Physics and Air–sea Interaction at the eastern edge of the Warm Pool (TPOS 2020 Reports). It is anticipated that NOAA, and national and international partners will pursue a process study field effort in the Tropical Pacific in 2026 or 2027. NOAA Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program, with national and international partners, supports TPOS and advancement of the TPOS 2020 Project recommendations. We will discuss TPOS implementation status and upcoming process studies and provide an opportunity for community feedback, collaboration, and innovation.

NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD) leverages open data, public-private partnerships, and the cloud to support those living in a changing environment by disseminating NOAA data via the cloud. Through its 9 years, NODD has evolved significantly as users are transitioning to the cloud and relying on NOAA’s valuable environmental data. NOAA’s efforts support effective coordination and change in the organizations and individuals working on these issues, including the cloud service providers themselves.NODD’s technical and engagement experiences in this past year span greater coordination with NOAA Line Offices, deriving value from cloud metrics, understanding users' experience via “Office Hours” and user case studies which provide insight into their interoperability needs. With additional interagency coordination, these efforts collectively highlight the importance of seamless integration and coordination, avenues for improving accessibility, and perspectives from users on the need for enhanced cloud dissemination.NODD’s continued and consistent participation with AMS via Town Halls has highlighted the importance of data access via the cloud and the value of user engagement. The 2024 Town Hall spans technical, engagement and policy discussions, and delves into emerging technologies that end users and partners are harnessing to maximize the value and impact of NOAA’s data.

Given the need for more technological innovation in the geosciences to help achieve Net Zero and move to the new Green Economy and the growing challenges of climate and associated environmental change, increasing numbers of natural disasters, and the need to increase the resilience of communities impacted by these, the National Science Foundation is entering a new phase where use-inspired, translational, and transdisciplinary research is moving to the fore. To further this agenda, NSF and GEO have and are initiating new funding opportunities to encourage geoscientists to focus on research that quickly delivers results and impacts to society and the economy. These include programs that support collaboration with industry, local communities, and those in the medical/public health professions. Programs also include opportunities that help educate and support geo-entrepreneurs with a spectrum of programs that fund activities in customer discovery, prototyping, and commercialization. Come hear what’s new at NSF in these arenas, all of which move your ideas and research to greater impact and visibility of what you are doing.

NOAA leaders will discuss NOAA’s role in global observations and climate services provided to the public. This town hall will help showcase how NOAA works with federal, private sector, academic, and international partners to timely develop and deliver the best products and services to address the climate crisis. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 made the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history - come hear how NOAA is using this funding to open science!

The United States experiences some of the most extreme weather events of any nation. Faced with significant changes in climate that are driving the severity, frequency, and location of disruptive weather events, the demand for timely, reliable, and accurate weather forecasts and climate projections is increasing. The Ocean Enterprise, includes the public, private, non-profit, research and academic sectors that provide infrastructure and capacity for ocean observation, measurement and forecasting, or who deliver operational ocean information products and services. Given the crucial role that the ocean plays in determining weather and climate, how can the Ocean Enterprise best work with its counterpart, the Weather Enterprise, to help deliver improved forecast skill and better climate projections? This Town Hall will focus on discussing opportunities to expand and improve NOAA’s integration of ocean and coastal observing programs into forecasting systems. The town hall will also explore ways to further evolve connections between the Ocean and Weather Enterprises in the delivery of improved weather forecasts and climate projections in support of coastal resilience and the Blue Economy.

The US Government (USG) is hard at work identifying the range of climate security risks and opportunities so that US policymakers can best take action to protect our national security in a changing world. Congressionally mandated activities, such as the Climate Security Advisory Council—which brings together the US Intelligence Community and US Federal Science Agencies—and the National Academies Climate Security Roundtable—which leverages non-government experts—continue to explore both the physical and transition security risks of climate change. To help advance the work of policymakers and position the US at the forefront of knowledge, foundational research at the intersection of climate science and security analysis is needed, e.g., how climate risks influence environmental, infrastructure, and human impacts around the world. The complex and multi-dimensional nature of this challenge requires greater cross-disciplinary work that leverages the unique expertise from different research fields and embraces the systems-level approach required to respond to climate security risks. This agency update will provide an overview of observational, modeling, and analytic capabilities that are needed by the USG to support climate security analyses, how to combine output from these models with use cases and historical data and experience.

Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) are the main drivers of climate change, responsible for more than 80% of the increase in radiative forcing relative to pre-industrial times (66% for CO₂, 16% for CH₄). The newly established US Government Greenhouse Gas Monitoring and Information Center (US GHG Center) is an interagency effort, led by NASA, to provide relevant, trusted, reliable greenhouse gas information and products to support climate change mitigation and adaptation decisions. This townhall provides an opportunity to view the latest in the development of the use cases, products, and the portal from the US GHG Center and allows stakeholders to share their thoughts on the current offerings, additional greenhouse gas information needed to support decision making, as well as provide space for discussion on private sector engagement, research advances in GHG monitoring products, and exploration of future partnerships.

This THM is to introduce the AMS audience the need for, and activities associated with, the Radar Next Program.  The NWS is seeking to understand the holistic, diverse set of radar user needs.  We wish to speak to the user community of our desire to work with them to understand current unmet user needs and what the community will need in the 2035-2060 timeframe.  Radar Next is being designed for more agility to adapt to changing needs, adopting a mix of observations, and supporting new business models that, collectively, will result in improvements to NOAA’s forecast capabilities while providing improved system resiliency and robustness.  The Program will manage the development and deployment of the next generation of weather radar platforms.  This critical Program balances the urgency of filling existing or future performance gaps with the need to establish an improved, efficient NWS weather radar data collection capability.

The National Weather Service (NWS) is making an effort to effectively reflect forecasters’ needs into policies and requirements for developers by renovating the process to develop and implement requirements into solutions, which include models, systems, technologies, and methodologies. The current NWS Governance guides us to first develop requirements independently of the developers. and then deliver them to the developers after going through a formal validation process. While this process itself is now widely understood and received, its application to actual situations is currently not considered optimal since the process is taking rather too long and the needed resources to implement the validated requirements is not sufficiently discussed and assigned. As a result, the validated requirements tend not to be delivered to the developers in time, and thus the field's needs are not properly and promptly addressed by the solutions. The Analysis and Nowcast Branch (AFS11; to be soon renamed to Analysis and Forecast Branch) of the Analyze, Forecast and Support Office has been making an effort to improve this situation. We are organizing a Town Hall Meeting to continue discussing ways to improve this situation and improve the NWS’ analysis and forecasting.

Across the 11 western states, flood damages from atmospheric rivers (AR) total roughly $1B per year. The frequency, intensity, and socio-economic impacts of these extreme western water events are strongly influenced by climate variations (such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation), and climate change is only expected to further exacerbate drought conditions punctuated by periods of intense precipitation. To become more resilient in the face of these events, skillful AR forecasts with sufficient lead time are needed. Improved forecasts will allow western water resource managers and other stakeholders to better prepare for hazardous weather impacts and manage reservoir operations. In addition, improved forecast skill will provide better information on how drought and flood risks will shift over the coming decades, which is vital to long-term infrastructure planning. NOAA leaders and scientists will speak on NOAA’s work to better understand and predict these phenomena and other western water issues.

The goal of the 2024 AMS Annual Meeting is to leverage the society’s collective strengths so that our broad community can define the steps and scientific advances necessary to minimize the impacts of climate change, and to engage policy makers and the public in that work. This town hall supports the 2024 AMS Annual Meeting theme. The U.S. is facing emerging threats to economic, national security, ecosystem, and habitat health from increasingly limited and stressed water supply and extreme events (floods and drought) nationwide due to aging water infrastructure, degrading water quality, population growth, and climate change. The National Weather Service (NWS) Office of Water Prediction (OWP) is taking steps to transform the nation’s water resources prediction capabilities, ranging from forecasts of floods to yearlong water supply to the quality of water inland and along the coasts, in an ongoing effort to improve impact-based decision support services.  This Town Hall will provide a status update on NOAA’s Next Generation Water Resources Modeling Framework (NextGen), National Water Model (NWM), Flood Inundation Mapping (FIM), Enterprise Hydrofabric Solution, and Precipitation Frequency Atlas (PFA), and how BIL Provision 3 will support their development. By the end of the decade, OWP will implement this comprehensive set of improved and innovative capabilities to implement the next generation water prediction capability. 

Speakers: Tom Graziano, Director, NOAA Office of Water Prediction (OWP); Brian Cosgrove, National Water Model Technical Director, Analysis and Prediction Division; Fred Ogden, Chief Scientist; David Vallee, Director, Service Innovation and Partnership Division (SIP); Sandra Pavlovic, Physical Scientist, Geo-Intelligence Division.  

Support for this Event is provided by:  Riverside Technology, inc; GAMA-1 Technologies, LLC; ASRC Federal; and M2 Strategy, Inc.

The Global Atmospheric Research Program's (GARP) Atlantic Tropical Experiment, known as GATE, took place 50 years ago. It was by far the most ambitious tropical field campaign, involving more than 5,000 scientists, technicians, and supporting staff from 72 countries. GATE observations have had an unmatched legacy in the atmospheric science. This town hall meeting is co-hosted by the 12th Symposium on the Madden-Julian Oscillation and Sub-Seasonal Monsoon Variability and the 22nd History Symposium as part of the GATE 50^th Anniversary Celebration. This meeting provides a platform for GATE veterans to share their experiences in planning and executing the field program, for the audience to engage in discussions pertaining to GATE-related topics, and for upcoming tropical field campaigns to be introduced. For early career professionals, this town hall meeting presents an exceptional chance to gain insights into this milestone event in the atmospheric science and have a glimpse into the future landscape of tropical field campaigns.

The National Integrated Drought Information System Reauthorization Act of 2018 (NIDISRA) instructs NOAA to establish the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) Program as part of the Weather Program Office (WPO) to accelerate community-developed scientific and technological enhancements into the operational applications for numerical weather prediction (NWP). This Town Hall will highlight recent progress in the NOAA EPIC program to accelerate the transition of innovative research and development into operational NWP systems, and to clarify operational priorities for . EPIC has established a virtual web-based Community Portal (https://epic.noaa.gov) to support continuous integration and continuous development of the Unified Forecast System (UFS) weather model, the code base of the UFS Medium-Range Weather (MRW), Short-Range Weather (SRW), Hurricane, Coastal, Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) applications. EPIC hosts regular community engagement events and provides advanced user support to the UFS Community. EPIC is also providing scientific innovation opportunities in partnership with other WPO and NOAA programs, including the newly established WPO Innovation for Next Generation Scientists and upcoming Notice of Funding Opportunities. Community members are invited to participate in order to understand how they can leverage EPIC in learning and performing research to advance the UFS, and to provide feedback on how the program can help better support the weather enterprise.

In 2022, DOE’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program announced a new initiative, Urban Integrated Field Laboratories (IFLs), to support multi-institutional team efforts to improve the science underpinning the understanding of climate and environmental predictability across complex and variable urban regions. Four urban IFL projects have been established – with research focusing on the urban regions of Chicago, IL; Baltimore, MD; Beaumont-Port Arthur, TX; and Tucson-Phoenix-Flagstaff, AZ. The urban IFL projects combine field observations, urban modeling, and community engagement to integrate research over three themes: spatial variabilities affecting urban communities; observing and modeling biogeochemical cycling and atmospheric composition in urban systems; and quantifying the benefits of equitable solutions that are applied to heterogeneous urban regions in addressing the climate crisis. This Town Hall will provide an update on BER’s growing portfolio of urban research (https://ess.science.energy.gov/urban-ifls/) and provide time for discussion on how BER seeks to grow and connect the Urban IFL research community.

The NASA Earth Science Flight program is a dynamic undertaking consisting of a large fleet of operating satellites, an array of satellite and instrument projects in development, and a robust airborne science program which augments and advances the use of satellite data. The current fleet of 23 operating missions provides a wide range of scientific measurements obtained from dedicated Earth-observing satellites and the ISS. Projects in development include both directed missions and competitively selected Principal Investigator-led Earth Venture missions. In May 2021, NASA initiated the Earth System Observatory in response to the 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey, including the competitively selected Earth System Explorers. The Earth Science Flight program benefits from investments by the Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) to develop and demonstrate cutting-edge technologies that can be applied to future Earth Science measurements and missions.

Support for this Agency Update and Box Lunches have been generously provided by Northrop Grumman Corporation [NGC]

NWS Director Ken Graham will discuss his vision for the future of the NWS. A discussion of key initiatives, priorities, and activities will be provided by leaders across the NWS. Critical mile interactions and work with NWS partners will be highlighted. Come hear important updates and have an opportunity to interact with NWS leadership!