87th AMS Annual Meeting

Wednesday, 17 January 2007: 4:45 PM
Societal and Economic Research and Applications priorities for the North American THORPEX program
209 (Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center)
Rebecca E. Morss, NCAR, Boulder, CO; and J. K. Lazo, H. Brooks, B. Brown, P. Ganderton, and B. Mills
THORPEX is a major ten-year international research program that seeks to improve 1-to-14-day high-impact weather forecasts for the benefit of society, the economy, and the environment. To help THORPEX fulfill this mission, it includes, along with meteorological elements, a Societal and Economic Research and Applications (SERA) subprogram. In August 2006, the National Center for Atmospheric Research hosted a workshop to bring together members of the interdisciplinary North American SERA community. The primary goal of the workshop was to develop a research agenda for the North American THORPEX SERA program and related research on socioeconomic aspects of weather prediction. Workshop discussions focused primarily around four themes: communication of forecast uncertainty, user-relevant forecast verification, the economic value of forecasts and use of forecasts in decision-making, and weather-related decision support. Collaborations with developing countries were also addressed. We will discuss the research priorities identified through the workshop, within each of the four themes and integrated across the themes. The resulting agenda will help guide social science-physical science interdisciplinary research related to THORPEX, and it will contribute to broader research on weather-society interactions.

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