National Earth System Prediction Capability: Coordinating Across Time Scales, across Agencies

The nation's security and economic well-being rely upon accurate global analysis and prediction of the physical environment over time scales of a few days to a few decades. The need for better-informed decisions is amplified by recent trends in the climate mean and variability, which reduce the reliability of predictions using average conditions and the recent extreme events affecting commerce, defense, infrastructure and water, energy and other resources. The National ESPC partnership was formed following interagency discussions extending between 2005 and 2010 to improve the combined federal capability across synoptic through multidecadal (~30 year) scale, to improve environmental predictions and help decision makers address critical policy and planning issues by extending the national predictive capability from days to seasonal, annual and decadal time periods through improved, coupled global environmental prediction. As validated in the 2017 Weather Research and Forecast Improvement Act (P.L. 115-25), the National ESPC assists agencies to partner on common science in order to improve each agency’s ability to meet its specific mission. Multiple working groups work various mutual S&T and R&D problems to come to common solutions for the broader enterprise.

Five federal agencies partner to create a National Earth System Prediction Capability (ESPC): the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Defense (U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force), Dept. of Energy (DOE), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and National Science Foundation (NSF). The Executive Steering Group consists of Interdepartmental Committee for Meteorological Services and Supporting Research (ICMSSR)-level representatives across the five agencies, and reports to the Federal Committee for Meteorological Services and Supporting Research (FCMSSR).