95th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

January 04 - 08, 2015

As highlighted at the Presidential Forum, the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise has an exciting future in store as we focus on meeting the evolving societal needs in the coming decades. NOAA is energized to continue the partnership with all components of the Enterprise, especially as they pertain to NOAA's priorities for the next 5 years. At this town hall, NOAA Administrator, Dr. Kathryn Sullivan will discuss NOAA's plans for evolving the National Weather Service, building community resilience, and investing in observations. As an Enterprise, we will ensure the United States continues to push cutting edge research, technology, and improved predictions to its partners and the public. Following her opening remarks, Dr. Sullivan will engage in a lively discussion with all those interested in helping to build a Weather-Ready Nation.

The AMS membership includes individuals who have physical limitations, such as blindness or vision impairment, hearing loss or limited hand use or mobility. Individuals with disabilities have a great deal to contribute to our field and desire to participate. Making meetings accessible to people with disabilities not only encourages inclusion, but it also brings forth diverse perspectives, effective partnerships, and enhanced opportunities for all participants. We would like to propose a town-hall meeting to commence a discussion on the topic of making AMS meetings fully accessible to people with disabilities. The session will serve as a platform to address accessibility barriers and needs of participants with disabilities. We intend to invite a few speakers and engage the AMS membership on a panel discussion on this topic. We hope to explore answers to questions like why is it important to fully engage people with disabilities, what is the role of AMS in this engagement, how can AMS meetings be made accessible, etc. This discussion, the first of its kind at the AMS Annual Meeting, will serve as a guide to plan accessible AMS events in the future. We will summarize the discussions in a follow-up report that will form the basis of further action on this topic.

The Board for Early Career Professionals invites you to participate in a panel discussion regarding building a resume that will make you stand out in a sea of job applications. Panelists from academic, broadcast, government, and private sectors will be on hand to share past experiences, and provide tips and techniques to write an effective resume, whether it’s for your first, second, or subsequent job. Talks will be given by each panelist, along with a Q&A session at the end. Topics will include: •Tailoring your resume for every job application. •Understanding what skill sets hiring managers look for. •Recognizing the difference between a resume and curriculum vitae (CV). •Knowing what to leave off a resume. •Making an eye-catching demo tape. •Going above and beyond. All members of the AMS community, including undergraduate and graduate students, post docs, and early career professionals are encouraged to attend this one hour town hall meeting.

The mission of NWS global models is to provide the best possible numerical forecasts to our customers. A key element in providing accurate forecasts is the availability of accurate numerical guidance provided by computer models, mostly provided by NCEP. To address growing service demands and improve the accuracy of the forecasts, NWS needs to remain at the cutting-edge of research and model development and continuously transition science advances from research community to operations (R2O). Given the tremendously increased complexities of weather, climate and environmental prediction systems in the last two decades, the demands for more and more rigorous technology transfer processes and quality management procedures are increased. In an effort to foster more effective communications and successful research to operation transition to improve NWS operational models, NWS and OAR are sponsoring a Town Hall Meeting on NWS Model Development Forum. The purpose is to explain to the partners and stakeholders operational constraints and management procedures for the NWS model development and transition processes, and to get feedback on the expectations and requirements from the community.

For generations, the National Weather Service has utilized the terms "Watch", "Warning", and "Advisory" (WWA) to convey expectations of impact and level of forecast certainty associated with expected weather and water hazards. However, results of numerous NWS Service Assessments, initial social science research and other interactions with partners and the public suggests that many people misunderstand these terms - or confuse the terms one to another. In addition, there exists confusion among the 100+ products NWS uses to differentiate among the type, impact and forecast certainty of these hazards. In response, NWS has initiated a "Hazards Simplification (or "Haz Simp") study to assess whether there may exist alternatives to WWA that would prove to be more intuitive, more easily understood and/or more easily communicated to users for the purpose of inspiring desired action by the public. This effort has now engaged social research and Phase I of this research has now been completed. High level results from the 20 focus groups held among the public, emergency managers, broadcasters and NWS forecasters during Phase I are as follows: •Most people misunderstand the term "Advisory". •Many supported the use of a hierarchical, color-based scheme to express varying levels of forecast certainty and impact (such as is employed by the European "Meteoalarm" system). •Some people believe the system is working well enough and that enhanced education would increase understanding. •Any change should be considered carefully and executed gradually. The purpose of this Town Hall will be to present the results of "Haz Simp Phase I" and engage discussion from participants on their reaction and suggested options/alternatives for moving forward based on these results. Feedback on how "institutionalized" WWA is in partner and public decision making processes will also be welcomed. Also, all Annual Meeting attendees will be invited to visit the "Haz Simp" booth in the Exhibition Hall, where prototypes developed based on the Phase I results will be available for comment as part of Phase II of this project.

There is a tight correlation between weather and energy consumption but the relationship between meteorology and the electricity grid runs much deeper. The industry has undergone many changes and our Nation’s grid is increasingly more complex. From the integration of large scale wind generation and the complexities introduced from their intermittent behavior, to the disruptive forces of distributed solar generation and it’s ever increasing footprint, to maintaining overall grid resiliency in the wake of Super-Storm Sandy and other large scale severe weather outbreaks. These challenges with their increasing levels of complexity are being met head on by increased computational resources, big weather data in the form of increased observations and model output, and other big data being collected by the utilities. The topics this Town Meeting will address broadly are: 1.Distributed Solar and its impact in Southern California. What is the “duck curve” and what can be done to mitigate its impact on the grid? 2.Outage modeling is now real, and in place within several utilities. How are outage models performing, and how are the utilities using big weather data to push the envelope further? 3.Resiliency isn’t just a difficult word to spell. All aspects of our Nation’s Energy Complex are dealing with climate adaptation. What role can the meteorological community play in this planning work? This Town Hall Meeting is held in conjunction with the AMS Energy Committee and the AMS Renewable Energy Committees’ Sixth Conference on Weather, Climate and the New Energy Economy. Immediately following this Town Hall Meeting, joins us for an "Energizing" Happy Hour reception. Kick off the night's activities with light appetizers and drinks. Full details on the reception will be provided at the town hall meeting.

What is meant by Open Environmental Information? What are the gaps today for access to government-held environmental information and services? What are the impacts of those gaps and what are the societal benefits if those gaps are closed? How do we close the gaps and how rapidly can this be done? Who should take on the role to close the gaps? The Town Hall will include a panel and moderator and will encourage audience participation. The following are excerpts from the Terms of Reference of the COEIS and is provided as additional background for the Town Hall. “Open, timely access to rich state-of-the-science environmental data, model output, archives and information is crucial for the Weather and Climate Enterprise to optimally serve the nation. To help NOAA and similar sources of environmental data ( federal, state, municipalities, etc.) ensure that such services are created and shared according to the principles of the open services paradigm, it is important to have clear and open exchanges amongst members of the Enterprise. This is especially true in an era of not only rapidly evolving information services, but also in uncertain fiscal conditions that may limit service options. It is also true that private industry, academia, and other organizations and institutions have access to data, model output, archives and information that is of communitywide value and must be included in the open dialogue. The American Meteorological Society is uniquely positioned to host and catalyze such exchanges. The primary goals of open environmental information services are to ensure that: a.The Weather and Climate Enterprise, and therefore the nation as a whole, realize maximum value from environmental information services by ensuring that all potentially useful and relevant information is available to the entire Enterprise; b.New environmental information services and technologies are developed openly in symbiotic partnership with all elements of the Enterprise such that the resulting services achieve optimal utility and efficacy when deployed. This includes development in the broadest sense, and includes data bases, access systems, models, data assimilation schemes, applications, measurement and observing systems, and so forth. The purpose of the COEIS is to build and strengthen bridges between various sectors of the weather and climate communities to help achieve the open environmental information services goals. While much of the focus of COEIS will be towards NOAA environmental services and the communities that develop and use such services, the committee will also work to foster open services with other domestic and foreign members of the Enterprise. While there are a number of forums in which NOAA and related government agencies currently engage the Enterprise on related topics, the COEIS would provide an explicit AMS entity to help encourage, create, promote, organize, expand, standardize, and execute these generally ad hoc efforts today.”

The National Center for Atmospheric Research and its managing entity, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, have undertaken strategic planning over the last two years. The UCAR plan is in the final draft stages after input from UCAR's 103 member universities. The NCAR plan has recently been finalized after community consultation and input from NSF. The two documents that have emerged will work in concert with each other, with UCAR's plan supporting the science goals outlined in the NCAR plan. This town hall will update attendees on the current status of the UCAR plan, including broad themes and objectives and the emergent goals related to research, facilities, services, education, training, and other activities of broad interest. A brief overview of NCAR's future directions based on its new strategic plan will also be provided.

Looking for ideas for your local AMS chapter? Have an idea to share? Interested in learning about local AMS chapters? Join us at the first ever Local AMS Chapter Town Hall - designed for both student and regular chapter officers, members and prospective members. This town hall will be held on Tuesday, January 6, 2015 from 8:00am to 8:30am. The Chapter of the Year award winners will begin the town hall by sharing activities that have worked well for them over the past year. All chapters are invited to share their successful activities, in addition to, their challenges to seek advice from other chapters. Those interested in joining a local chapter are also invited to attend to learn about local AMS chapters and how to participate. The Local Chapter Affairs Committee and local AMS chapters from across the country invite you to take part in this information sharing session!

Student and early career members of the AMS represent the next generation of educators, scientists, broadcasters, and technical professionals that will continue to advance the weather enterprise. As their careers grow, these members will assume greater roles in the advancement of our scientific and related capabilities, supporting a broader thematic goal of “Fulfilling the Vision of Weather, Water, and Climate Information for Every Need, Time, and Place.” The AMS supports student and early career members in many ways, such as long-standing conferences catering to their specific needs and interests, and the technical meetings and sessions to be held during the 95th Annual Meeting in Phoenix. Student and early career members can also benefit from presenting, exchanging, and discussing their research interests and goals in an informal setting, fostering and growing the social networks critical to their future success. The New Ideas Forum offers additional opportunities for student and early career members to engage the community during the weeklong AMS Annual Meeting. We are introducing The New Ideas Forum as a way for attendees to provide a brief, informal overview of their current and future interests in a collegial setting. Informal discussions are encouraged across all aspects of our discipline, including basic science, applied science, education, new technology, policy interests, or future directions you feel our field may be headed. Participants will be given the opportunity to introduce themselves to their community, share highlights of their interests, and engage in questions and answers with their peers. The goal of the session is to increase networking opportunities for student and early career members participating in the Annual Meeting, and to encourage partnerships among student, early, and later-career members that can lead to mentoring opportunities, business or proposal collaborations, and other activities of mutual benefit. This Tuesday lunch-hour session will focus on activities of student and early-career members. Interested participants, including mid- and late-career members, are invited to stop by the Town Hall Meeting session on Tuesday. Session chairs will help to coordinate an informal exchange among attendees while ensuring time for all to participate. Participants will then be provided up to 5 minutes to present their interests. A few presentation charts are welcome, but not required. Ideally, this session will function as a “speed round” of introductions and interactions among attendees to share their new ideas and future goals.

The current and new generation of operational polar-orbiting and geostationary environmental satellite systems (JPSS, GCOM-W, Metop, DMSP, GOES-R and Himawari) are being accompanied by new and improved user applications. Many of these improved applications are being made available to regions outside the conterminous United States (OCONUS) through direct broadcast (DB) technology and by other means. These user applications include tropical cyclone monitoring, volcanic ash tracking, river flood assessment, and low cloud and fog forecasting. These new user applications are anticipated to become critical tools for weather forecasters and environmental managers in regions with a scarcity of other data. The use of direct broadcast antennas offers the user many advantages such as reduced data latency, the ability to network with other DB sites to create wider regional coverage, and the ability to assimilate these data into forecast models to help generate locally-unique products. The Town Hall will convene a panel with broad expertise in satellite data applications and DB technology to discuss these new satellite applications, their current operational use, and the evaluation of their impact to the user communities in OCONUS regions.

This AMS Town Hall meeting is expected to raise awareness of the unprecedented opportunity to innovate, coordinate and collaborate in the water sector to address 21st century water resource and management challenges such as water shortages and security, water quality and hydrologic extremes. Speakers from academia and federal agencies (including NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS), the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) will discuss how strong involvement through the National Water Center (NWC) will enhance joint planning and co-development of new science as well as the transition of research results to sustained applications and operations. The NWC provides the capacity to transform, integrate and modernize hydrology and water resource science-based services to improve resiliency and build a more Weather and Water Ready Nation. Designed for optimal coordination and collaboration across the climate, water and weather enterprise, the NWC promotes a total water approach that fosters linkages between riverine and coastal water outcomes. By working closely with the community-of-practice (academia, industry) as well as various regional and local actors (end-users such as farmers, federal, state, regional and local water resource managers, commercial enterprises…) this approach will catalyze development and exploitation of state-of-the-science and infrastructure to enable sustainable solutions. Demand-driven innovation, merging interdisciplinary and new information, will contribute to the knowledge base supporting decision making in water resource and emergency management as well as key sectors such as transport, tourism, fisheries, agriculture, biotech, resource extraction and energy. The intended result is for the NWC to provide the Nation’s most trusted and authoritative source for comprehensive and integrated water predictions including critical data, models, analyses, and forecast information to enhance resilience to high impact extreme hydrometeorological events. Recognizing the advanced challenges, NWC-partnerships are being created to strengthen capabilities and do new things that focus on key areas including data interoperability, enterprise GIS, improving observational capacity, and numerical modeling to simulate hydrologic processes and the water budget at very high resolution. As an example, the NWC will operate and improve end-to-end early warning and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) systems, and make available and accessible the predictive information and related data, models, maps and forecast products for optimizing decision-support services.

Scenarios of future physical climate conditions provide the necessary unifying foundation for internally consistent consideration of impacts and for modeling of impacts performed specifically for the climate assessment process. The development of scenarios for the Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment and the Sustained Assessment process is already beginning and this Town Hall is intended to provide a mechanism for gathering input from the climate community on the scenarios process. Issues to be addressed include, but are not limited to, the use of CMIP3 vs. CMIP5 model simulations, statistical and dynamical downscaling, higher temporal resolution (e.g. sub-daily) scenarios, and integration with other types of scenarios such as land-use or population change.

This Town Hall session will provide an opportunity for the earth science community to interact with members of the leadership team and staff of the Earth Science Division (ESD) of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Brief presentations by the ESD leadership will precede a longer opportunity for audience questions. Topics to be addressed in the Town Hall session include scientific accomplishments and programmatic milestones from the past year, current programmatic directions, and NASA’s progress towards implementing the missions identified in the June 2010 report "Responding to the Challenge of Climate and Environmental Change:NASA’s Plan for a Climate-Centric Architecture for Earth Observations and Applications from Space" which incorporates recommendations from the National Research Council’s 2007 Decadal Survey for Earth Science, “Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond.” Recent developments in the Venture Class program and? the non-flight parts of the NASA program (research and analysis, applied sciences, technology) and NASA's involvement in interagency and international programs will also be reviewed.

With the rapid development of the technological infrastructure upon which modern society depends comes a growing appreciation of the hazards presented by the phenomena around our home planet that we call space weather. The complexity of the coupled Sun-Earth system, the sparseness by which it can be covered by remote-sensing and in-situ instrumentation, and the costs of the required observational and computational infrastructure warrant an international approach with feasible, affordable solutions. COSPAR and the steering committee of the International Living With a Star program tasked a multi-disciplinary, international team with the development of a roadmap with the goal of demonstrably improving our observational capabilities for, scientific understanding of, and ability to forecast the various aspects of space weather. This presentation reviews the significance of space weather, and summarizes the roadmap, its top-priority recommendations, and their underlying rationale.

The Symposium on Education seeks input to help formulate ideas for activities and sessions for the 2016 annual AMS meeting. Please join us for an inclusive conversation about the Education Symposium. We seek ideas to make the symposium even more dynamic, to better connect it to research and other research-focused symposia, and to interest more annual meeting attendees in participating. We welcome your ideas and suggestions.

Weather information is being used in exciting new ways. The forefront of this innovation is online applications such as search, social, and mobile. This Town Hall panel brings together four key players in this space – Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft – to discuss how they use weather to reach billions of consumers, often in novel ways. David Kenny, CEO of The Weather Company, will moderate. Panelists include: • Bryan Hurren, strategic partnerships manager at Facebook • Andrew Fitzgerald, Media Partnerships team at Twitter • Arial Gronau, technical program manager at Google • Brett Tanzer, weather program manager at Microsoft

Wikipedia defines Weather Risk Management as “a way for organizations to limit their financial exposure to disruptive weather events.” The Weather Risk Management Association defines it as “having two facets: (1) The management of the financial consequences adverse weather for those with natural exposure to weather; and (2) Commercial trading of weather risk, both in its own right and in conjunction with a variety of commodities. “ Willis Group’s website cites “Traditional insurance offers protection against events such as floods and storms, but in the UK and in Europe there is not yet a wide use of protection against the effects of seasonal weather patterns such as temperature, rainfall or sunshine. However, these factors can have a major influence on corporate results and many firms publicly acknowledge this. As weather hedging becomes more commonplace, blaming the weather for poor results will become less acceptable.” The CME Group says “To help manage [the] impact on consumers and corporations, CME Group’s product slate has grown to meet customer needs by offering multiple risk management opportunities related to temperature, snowfall, frost, rainfall and hurricanes in more than 50 cities worldwide. Weather futures and options are available for block trading, which are privately negotiated futures, options, or combination transactions.” The term “Weather Risk Management” means many different things across our professional community. Weather trading, commodity trading, insurance, reinsurance and hedging are all terms of art. But what does it all really mean?? Who protects their business from weather risk? What information do they need in order to ‘manage weather risk?’ What is weather risk?? What does Weather Risk Management mean for meteorologists? What opportunities does it present? How have those opportunities changed since the first financial products were introduced in the late 1990s? Where is the market headed and what does that mean for information providers, experts, and customers? Join our panel of experts as we discuss the future for Weather Risk Management.

We will discuss a new initiative for complex measurements in hurricanes with the purpose of advancing hurricane modeling. Physics of air-sea interactions, wave dynamics, atmospheric boundary layer, and upper ocean currents/mixing are very different in extreme winds compared to more benign conditions. However, our ability to observe and understand these physics is very limited. Often extrapolations from moderate conditions are relied upon even though they may not be physically justified. While theoretical research and numerical modeling of physics under extreme wind conditions have improved significantly over the last decade, there is little experimental and field evidence to validate and calibrate the models. In this meeting, we will discuss a new initiative to measure surface waves, air-sea fluxes, near-surface ocean turbulence/currents/mixing, and structure of the near-surface atmospheric boundary layer in extreme wind conditions for use in model validation. Please follow the link for more details (http://www.po.gso.uri.edu/airsea/ASI2015hurricane/Extreme_Events_meeting_AMS_2015.pdf)

The Weather Coalition (WC) welcomes new and returning members, as well as non-members interested in learning about the Weather Coalition and its activities, to this Town Hall event. The Weather Coalition Co-Chairs will provide a status of the organization, summarize activities associated with weather-related advocacy and legislation that took place across the past year, and discuss expected activities during 2015. Invited speaker Scott Rayder of UCAR will provide a legislative update that will focus on House and Senate legislative activities, budgets, and the recent elections.

Globally, high impact hydrometeorological events such as floods, flash floods, mudslides and droughts cause more humanitarian and economic losses than all other natural hazards. A key solution to mitigating climate, weather and water catastrophes is to establish End-to-End Early warning systems (EWS) as part of sustained and durable Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programs. Country Donors, Finance Institutions, Hydrometeorological Organizations, such as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and Federal agencies, such as NOAA, have established and strengthened EWS capacity in regions where climate-extreme events have caused major disasters, such as in Central America (Hurricane Mitch 1998), and yet after each disaster these systems have fallen into disrepair. There are many technical and social/cultural lessons that should be learned from capacity building hydrometeorological projects that are not captured and used to restructure projects to improve sustainability. Instead, we keep making many of the same design, development, operation and maintenance mistakes and keep getting the same results. Recent studies (Glance and Baudoin,2014) of hydrometeorological projects reveals lessons are not learned. In fact lessons are not readily learned nor applied by many of the players responsible for and investing in building capacity of National Hydrological and Meteorological Services required to support key sectors and vulnerable communities. A “Lessons Learned” conference is planned in 2015 to address the question why the international community is not learning from history and what must be done to change effective practices. In the U.S., hydrometeorological disasters such as Katrina and Sandy have had a significant impact on the economy and building resilience to future high impact events. How does the U.S. and its partners learn from disaster preparedness, response and recovery and are there more effective approaches and practices that will contribute to lesson learning internationally? Are there international approaches from which the US can learn ? A panel will discuss the Lessons learning processes in the US, how it can be improved and how the US could/should work in the Global theater of building resilience to the new normal of extreme and high-impact events.

The last few years has seen an increasing focus by the Met Office in the UK to provide Impact-based weather warnings in response to the public's, disaster management authorities' and Governments' needs to have a common, meaningful and understandable means of weather hazard communication. The UK's National Severe Weather Warning Service went impact-based in 2011 and a series of successfully communicated high impact flooding and wind storms events since then have provided ample evidence of the common language now being spoken between the scientists, planners and responders. The biggest challenge now is to further develop the underpinning science of weather hazard impact by integrating the mature science of weather forecasting with the developing science of hazard vulnerability and exposure. This necessarily requires an increasing dependency on other agencies and new databases, the development of interoperable science and visualisation frameworks and new and innovative means of monitoring and reporting hazard impact. The Natural Hazard Partnership, chaired by the Met Office, is leading the way in coordinating work in the UK to broaden the science to services pipeline into a range of multi-hazard impact assessments. This town hall talk looks to take us on the journey that is multi-hazard impact science into relevant and understandable assessments and warnings to the public, disaster management authorities and UK Governments. The second half of the town hall will feature an update and discussion of the Bárðarbunga volcanic activity and its impacts with updates from Sara Barsotti from the IMO and others.

Currently available systems to disseminate observations and model-generated data to atmospheric and climate scientists are varied, and funding agencies are exploring ways to harmonize data inventories into a form where researchers can access information in a seamless and efficient manner. We will summarize the DOE pathway towards unification of DOE data inventories, including investments to provide server side analysis, multi-dimensional visualization, federated data nodes, and options to overcome the growing data storage challenge. Within this Town Hall we hope to facilitate a forum whereby attendees can help shape our future plans.

The AMS Board on Higher Education, Board for Operational Government Meteorologists, and Weather Analysis and Forecast Committee invite you to participate in a panel discussion regarding employment opportunities and challenges for newly graduated meteorologists. Panelists from government and private sectors will be on hand to provide insight on where job opportunities are opening up and what future indicators are suggesting for the next several years. Short talks will be given by each panelist, along with a Q&A session at the end. Areas addressed will include: •Additional skills that make a new B.S. holder more competitive in the job market •Tips on finding job opportunities •Additional strategies to enhance your potential for employment •Benefits of additional education All members of the AMS community, including undergraduate and graduate students, post docs, and early career professionals are encouraged to attend this one hour town hall meeting.

The Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) is the new space-based altimeter mission being developed for a target launch in 2017. ICESat-2 will continue important observations of ice-sheet elevation change, sea ice freeboard, and vegetation canopy height begun by the first ICESat mission, which operated from 2003 to 2009. This town hall discusses the primary ICESat-2 data products and highlights the different initiatives and goals of the ICESat-2 Applications program. Our goal is to elicit questions to foster the development of currently underrepresented thematic areas that will benefit from ICESat-2 measurements.

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.

In response to the deepening drought sweeping the southwestern US in 2014 and the perennial stress on the region’s water resources, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC offers a suite of climate data, products, and services. End users requiring these products and services range from State Climatologists to regional and local water providers and agricultural extension agents. The drought products offered include the weekly US Drought Monitor Report, authorship in the Monthly North American Drought Monitor, and essential measurement variables including Soil moisture, Palmer Drought Indices (PDSI) the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the TD9658 Palmer Drought. NCDC also provides in-situ and satellite datasets and analysis of historical and current drought conditions. All of the climate data, products, and services offered by NCDC for drought response, focused on the southwestern US, will be presented and discussed. In addition, NCDC and NOAA continually seek to improve their support to decision makers. To that end, input will be solicited via discussion on emerging needs from decision makers and how those needs may be met through the nation’s climate archives and science.

This Town Hall comprises two interconnected projects: the WMO/WWRP High-Impact Weather Project (HIWeather), and a new US initiative to develop a plan that integrates US interests in HIWeather with two other WMO/WWRP projects: the Polar Prediction and Subseasonal-to-Seasonal Prediction projects. This Town Hall will provide an opportunity to find out more about the activities that are planned and to question those involved about how to get involved. Despite dramatic improvements in forecast accuracy in the last decade, the global cost of high impact weather continues to grow at an alarming rate. HIWeather will focus global research on those aspects of the weather enterprise, both science- and service-related, that currently inhibit effective responses to forecasts and warnings, especially with regard to the impacts of urban flooding, wildfires, local extreme winds, disruptive winter weather and extreme heat/air pollution in megacities. Working together on these problems will both accelerate progress and enable less developed nations to benefit. In parallel, efforts have been underway since mid-2014 to engage the US community in the three aforementioned WMO/WWRP projects, and for participants to identify critical gaps, common scientific challenges and priorities. The next stage in the US is to develop a coordinated community project plan. In addition to introducing the structure for a US project plan, Town Hall participants are encouraged to provide feedback on the path forward, and contributions from the community to the drafting of the US project plan are encouraged.

Midlatitude air-sea interaction, including the climatic impacts of strong western boundary currents and associated oceanic fronts, is drawing increasing attention from climate science community. These impacts have been studied extensively during a 5-year Japanese "Hotspot Project" launched in 2010. An overview and the main outcomes of this project are introduced in this Town Hall Meeting. We will discuss how the community can utilize the unique data obtained by the intensive observation campaigns around the Kuroshio Extension, and how we can coordinate international collaborations in future. Grab your lunch and join us for a lively discussion on the “hotspots of our climate system”.

To advance the dialogue on the collaboration of private, public, and adademic elements of the weather enterprise for the future, panelists will discuss weather services infrastructure, trends, and innovations as a wrap-up to the Annual Meeting Theme of "Fullilling the Vision of Weather, Water, Climate Information for Every Need, Time, and Place" in collaboration with the AMS Commission ont he Weather and Climate Enterprise.