The history of our sciences is a shared history from the beginnings until 2020 and into the future and from the surface, to space, whether liquid, solid, gas, particulate, micro, meso, or macro scale.  The history is a wonderful story of great advances in our sciences and the application of our sciences to our fellow earthly inhabitants, our economy and our societies. Integral to the advances in our physical sciences, there has always been a way of communicating what we observe now, or in the past,  and what we believe the future will be.  Weather and climate, observing, forecasting and communicating have been and helped make history since we could first communicate. "How's the weather" may be a universal greeting in every language. 

A joint half day session or "town hall" with the conference on broadcast meteorology, weather analysis and forecasting, weather water and climate Enterprise, weather ready nation, societal applications and other conferences and symposia, will create the opportunity to jointly celebrate our shared histories of science and service, discuss common goals and think about a future where the perfect observation and forecast leads to a perfect decision be it minutes, hours, days or decades.

A brief look back at the beginning of the AMS and where understanding of weather and climate was in 1919 and how forecasts were communicated and a quick time travel to 2020 will set the stage for discussing where we are now, what our shared challenges are, scientific, economic and even political and what might be a common path or at least neighborly paths forward.  Speakers will include a number of invited leaders outside of our weather, climate hydrologic sciences to provide unifying thoughts and ideas.  Names such as James Lee Witt, Baruch Fishoff, Tom Wallsten, Senator Ed Markey, Andy Revkin, Ray Kurzweil more and some very young original thinkers who live near Boston and would be happy to give us off the wall ideas to think about.  A panel discussion with the attending conference chairs would give reaction to the day or 1/2 day and what the headlines will be in 10, 50 or 100 years.

Our AMS100 Annual Meeting has almost 40 different titled conferences, symposia and programs. It is important, as we celebrate 100, that we have some inclusive, unifying sessions or town halls and celebrate our commonality and may help guide  some coherence in our future as scientists, professionals, businesses, communicators, and more.