95th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

January 04 - 08, 2015

Twenty five years hence, meteorology will be much different and expand far beyond the traditional weather forecast. Personal sensors will monitor weather nearly everywhere. Advanced computing will allow us to forecast at perhaps minute scales and kilometer resolutions, customized for each particular user. Post-mobile devices will enable instantaneous use of the information – even in remote areas of today’s developing nations. Transportation will be safer, businesses will operate more efficiently, events will automatically schedule around anticipated weather, and much more. Operational weather forecasts will be interlaced with new environmental elements that impact economic, health, energy, and security decisions. Many aspects of our daily lives will change forever. Climate change’s possibilities add a critical dimension to community resiliency. Should global weather patterns be altered, forecasting could become more challenging than today. The recent release of the fifth IPCC synthesis report has brought focus to this particular issue. Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, NOAA Administrator, will lead the session with a keynote on her vision for the meteorology enterprise in the year 2040. Following her keynote, the panelists - representing different demographics and perspectives - will then provide their vision, accompanied by a moderated discussion among the panelists.

NASA has eleven Earth science missions currently in formulation and development, with eight scheduled to launch before the end of 2018. These include CATS (NET December 2014), SMAP (January 2015), SAGE III (2016), CYGNSS (2016), TEMPO (2017), GRACE FO (2017), ICESat-2 (2017), and ECOSTRESS (2018). These will join the fleet of seventeen operating NASA Earth science research satellites, including the recently launched Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, OCO-2, and ISS-Rapidscat, as well as other US and international weather, climate, and research satellites. NASA also has the responsibility for defining and implementing, in coordination with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the nation’s Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI) program to follow the currently flying Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 missions. Additionally, NASA has been directed to continue the fundamental climate measurements of solar irradiance, Earth radiation budget, and Ozone profiling to extend these data records into the future. How will NASA meet these demanding measurement objectives? NASA’s Earth Science Division is working now, in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the USGS, DOE, international partners, and with the industrial community on science studies, technology investments, and mission definition studies to prepare the next generation of satellites and observations for launch in 2019 and beyond. At this Town Hall meeting we will present the progress and plans for these next generation missions, including mission concepts from the 2007 NRC Decadal Survey (http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/) and from the 2010 NASA Climate Plan (http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/). We will identify opportunities for greater interaction with the NASA missions already in formulation and development, as well as opportunities for future collaboration as we move forward with this next generation of missions and measurements.