Traditionally, real-time weather observation and forecasting requirements have driven the specification of the instrumentation parameters for the operational environmental satellite systems. As climate monitoring and climate change science have matured over the last decade, climate requirements need to increasingly be considered in the trade-space with the requirements of weather. The initial approach of the U.S. Global Change Research Program was a broad attack on understanding the Earth as a system, but, according to the National Academies Pathways report, this approach made the Program too diffuse and left its long-term support vulnerable. Although these problems have been acknowledged and are being addressed, capturing climate observational requirements and incorporating them into the traditional operational environmental satellite requirements process remains difficult.

In this talk, we will outline the existing processes for climate observing system requirements and current approaches for attempting to prioritize those requirements. Quantifying these processes will require the development of cost and benefit models for the creation of climate data records, preservation of those records and their information content, and the value of these to society. Initial attempts at building and assessing such models will be discussed as will the trade space between weather and climate observing systems.