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Everyone presenting (both oral and poster) and/or attending the 96th AMS Annual Meeting must register and wear a badge. Early registration rates are valid through Tuesday, 1 December 2015. Registrations forms faxed or mailed to AMS Headquarters will be accepted until 15 December 2015. Online registrations will be accepted throughout the conference. Preregistration forms must be accompanied by one of the following forms of payment: check (personal/business/traveler's), money order, purchase order, or credit card number (MasterCard/VISA/American Express). Foreign checks must be drawn on a U.S. bank and made payable in U.S. dollars. Confirmation of registration will be sent once the form is processed. Refunds (less a $25 processing fee) will be granted only for cancellations received before 22 December 2015. Click here for more information on registration.

This year’s Presidential Forum reflects upon the American Meteorological Society (AMS) annual meeting theme, "Earth System Science in Service to Society" that provides participants a better understanding of living through extreme events. Our society continues to experience the effects of more and more extreme events like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and drought, some as a result of our changing climate and others as a result of our expanding population. The AMS needs to continue to address lessons learned, and more importantly, identify what future actions it will take to help mitigate the impact of these devastating life-changing events. To highlight this, we’ve invited an outstanding panel of speakers – Admiral Thad Allen, United States Coast Guard (ret), Executive Vice President Booz Allen Hamilton; Max Mayfield, Director, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Hurricane Center (ret); Dr. Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Dr. Shirley Laska, Professor Emerita, and founding past Director of the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology, University of New Orleans. Moderator Maureen McCann, News 13 Orlando, will lead a discussion of the panelists' personal experiences during Hurricane Katrina and Deepwater Horizon. The panel will also address AMS’s current activities that encompass research and forecasting of events and inspire our members to embrace a renewed sense of purpose as they direct our Society in the coming years.

This panel will introduce the federal policy landscape as related to the AMS community. The session will represent perspectives from both the Executive and Legislative branches and the role of the AMS Policy Program in the policy setting. The panelists will cover timely issues by discussing the 2015 activities and priorities of the Administration and Congress. Talks will include Congressional activity as experienced by the 2015-2016 AMS Congressional Science Fellow, pending legislation and relevant hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and other timely topics.

Over the last decade, great advances in meteorological technology, models and data visualization techniques have been matched by increasing access to these tools and forecasts, especially through social media. As members of the forecasting community, including broadcasters, private sector companies offering specialized services, National Weather Service forecasters, and emergency managers all adjust to these new technologies and communication media, messages have become increasingly complex, raising concerns that this increase in volume is being compounded by message inconsistency. Scholars in the social and behavioral sciences, especially in risk communication, point to inconsistency of message as a key challenge in assuring that members of various publics can be best-empowered to make decisions to protect themselves when hazardous weather threatens. As this issue has risen in importance within the meteorological community, there have been calls to work together as a forecasting enterprise to identify ground rules that could preserve consistency while still allowing for competition. This panel will assemble representatives from across the enterprise, including broadcast, emergency management, private sector, social media, academic, and federal partners, to unpack the idea of message consistency and - with help from the audience - identify ground rules for creating consistent messages

Please join other attendees for the Opening Reception of the 2016 Annual Meeting, sponsored by the exhibiting companies. Local government officials and other dignitaries will be present for the ribbon-cutting event.

Presentations will involve various disciplinary research methods and policies that are currently used for coping with extreme heat risk, and how they could be integrated for more accurate spatial and temporal understanding of extreme heat risk

Presentations will involve various disciplinary research methods and policies that are currently used for coping with extreme heat risk, and how they could be integrated for more accurate spatial and temporal understanding of extreme heat risk.

Louisiana Bayou tribal communities face critical challenges from shifting climate, extreme weather, hydrologic processes, and man-made environmental disaster. As a result, sea levels rise, storms surge, and coastlines shift. Community members are observing and experiencing changes that affect livelihoods, cultural practices, locally-produced environmental knowledges, and plans for their communities’ futures. This panel brings participatory researchers and thought leaders from the Isle de Jean Charles Tribe and Pointe au Chien Tribe of the lower Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, Louisiana into conversation about weather and climate impacts and responses. Panelists will draw from their experience to address questions about integrating scientific and local knowledge, community resilience, and adaptation in the 10 years since Hurricane Katrina and other events forever changed the bayou and coastlines.

Presentations will involve various disciplinary research methods and policies that are currently used for coping with extreme temperature risk, and how they could be integrated for more accurate spatial and temporal understanding of this risk

How does our community expect to continue to improve climate services to help society mitigate and adapt to climate variability and change? (NIDIS, IPCC, lessons learned from high impact events)

Precipitation patterns across the nation are changing, but not in the same way everywhere. Some places are experiencing new record extreme precipitation events, while others are coping with drought. As the climate continues to warm it is expected that historical precipitation patterns can no longer be reliably used to plan for the future. The uncertainty about future precipitation places new risks on community infrastructure essential for the livelihoods and safety of its residents.This session will explore how communities are using hydrological information in the context of a changing climate to prepare for an uncertain future for their water, either too much or too little. Presentations should focus on direct applications of climate and hydrological information and tools that inform decision making for community preparedness. Community preparedness can include:(1) Improvements to the built environment, including land use changes, to address changing water resources based on climate information; (2) Policy changes, such as updates to emergency response protocols, water utility planning, and water restriction measures; (3) Help to decision makers to communicate their water related risk management decisions to the public and improve community support and compliance for their decisions. In addition to showing how current information and tools can be used, it is encouraged to demonstrate what additional information would be useful, but is not readily available. Public, academic, and private sector decision support services and tools are welcomed. Key questions each presentation should address include:(a) How is hydrological information in the context of a changing climate being used to inform risk management decisions that improve community preparedness for water too much, and/or water too little? (b) What lessons learned or best practices emerged from your example that could be applied to other communities? (c) Who did you partner with and were these the right partners to improve community preparedness? (4) What additional information could the decision makers in your example have used that is not yet available? For more information, please contact the Program Organizers, Nancy Beller-Simms (nancy.beller-simms@noaa.gov) or Stephanie Herring (stephanie.herring@noaa.gov.

Often climate models and data are complex and built for use by climate scientists, but what about the decision makers looking for climate information to make decisions? Creating information from climate data and models involves making the data easy to understand and useful to citizen scientists and non-scientists alike. How can climate experts provide outlooks on climate useful for decisions on policy, infrastructure, resources, and life and safety? Some issues related to providing this information include data/model uncertainty, sampling errors, spatial resolution, model down-scaling, visualization, liability, and risk management, to name a few. This panel will discuss plans, strategies, challenges, perspectives, technologies, and the future of climate change information and services for society.

Same as parent oral session