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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.

A panel of senior managers and scientists will present their perspective on the challenges and opportunities of future spaced-based earth observation missions needed for providing more value-added applications addressing societal needs and increasing the scientific understanding of earth processes. They will describe how these challenges and opportunities are being addressed through changes to satellite architecture, sensor design, an evolving business model, and increased inter-agency and international cooperation, etc.

Poster Session on Transitioning Research to Operations

NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, launched on January 31, 2015, makes high-resolution, frequent revisit global mapping of surface soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state based on its unique coincident L-band radiometer and L-band radar measurements. The early period of science data acquisition contains the intense calibration and validation phase. Early beta geophysical data products release is scheduled for November 2015. Validated data are due after one year of calibration and validation. The instrument data products (Level 1) are released on a more accelerated schedule. The data are public and accessible at designated open data archives (National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO and the Alaska Satellite Facility in Fairbanks, AK). This special session includes presentations on the status of the SMAP observatory, reports on calibration and validation, and early science results. The session also include presentations on SMAPVEX15 and SMAPEx-4 airborne field campaigns, in Arizona and New South Wales, Australia respectively, that deploy airborne active and passive SMAP instrument simulators during several weeks in Summer 2015. The field campaigns fly the airborne instruments during SMAP overpasses and also include teams collecting ground-truth observations. The SMAP project has developed pre-launch collaborations with applied science and operational users who require soil moisture information in their decision-support systems. These include Numerical Weather Prediction, operational flash-flood and main-stem flood forecasting, and drought monitoring among others. The special session will include contributions from early users of SMAP observations about the impact of the new data stream on their operations. The special session is in line with the “Earth System Science in Service to Society” theme of the 96th Annual AMS Meeting.

NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, launched on January 31, 2015, makes high-resolution, frequent revisit global mapping of surface soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state based on its unique coincident L-band radiometer and L-band radar measurements. The early period of science data acquisition contains the intense calibration and validation phase. Early beta geophysical data products release is scheduled for November 2015. Validated data are due after one year of calibration and validation. The instrument data products (Level 1) are released on a more accelerated schedule. The data are public and accessible at designated open data archives (National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO and the Alaska Satellite Facility in Fairbanks, AK). This special session includes presentations on the status of the SMAP observatory, reports on calibration and validation, and early science results. The session also include presentations on SMAPVEX15 and SMAPEx-4 airborne field campaigns, in Arizona and New South Wales, Australia respectively, that deploy airborne active and passive SMAP instrument simulators during several weeks in Summer 2015. The field campaigns fly the airborne instruments during SMAP overpasses and also include teams collecting ground-truth observations. The SMAP project has developed pre-launch collaborations with applied science and operational users who require soil moisture information in their decision-support systems. These include Numerical Weather Prediction, operational flash-flood and main-stem flood forecasting, and drought monitoring among others. The special session will include contributions from early users of SMAP observations about the impact of the new data stream on their operations. The special session is in line with the “Earth System Science in Service to Society” theme of the 96th Annual AMS Meeting.

This session will explore research-to-operation concepts and applications that are bringing us closer to understanding how Earth's changing environment can influence the geographic range and incidence of infectious diseases, and will explore how this knowledge can increase our preparedness capacity.

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.

Joint between the 20IOAS-AOLS and the 6R2O

Understanding how to live on other planets first begins with understanding life interactions on Earth. The NASA and R2O session explores concepts and applications that utilize NASA satellites and instruments to improve our understanding of environment and human health.

NASA Earth Science Division has made some significant additions to its fleet of satellites, with the recent launches of GPM, OCO-2, RapidScat, CATS, and SMAP. This brings the total number of operating NASA Earth science research missions to nineteen. In addition, the Division has ten Earth science missions currently in formulation and development, with six scheduled to launch before the end of 2018. These include SAGE III (2016), CYGNSS (2016), TEMPO (2017), GRACE FO (2017), ICESat-2 (2017), and ECOSTRESS (2018). 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. Taking the next step in this process, NASA has initiated the planning for the Landsat 9 project. Another major project NASA is kicking off in 2016 is the PACE mission, to perform radiometric and possibly polarimetric ocean and atmosphere data collection, returning a range of geophysical data from which properties of the ocean and atmosphere can be determined to add to other critical climate and Earth system records. 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. For further information, please contact Eric Ianson eianson@nasa.gov.

New technological information services that will assist in the timely and accurate weather information at our fingertips (what are they, how are they used, examples of best practices, how to transition these to the public)

The Sixth Conference on Transition of Research to Operations (6R2O) will hold a panel discussion on Considerations and Best Practices for Transition of Research to Operations along the theme of connecting research to societal benefits. The panel will be composed of leaders in R2O from government, academia, and industry. The panel of experts will each make a brief presentation on their experience with R2O leadership and their understanding of best practices. Many challenges are common to R2O programs across sectors, and best practices from one agency will likely prove applicable in another. Funding is a well known challenge, and frequently cited as the limitation, but often is only part of a solution in combination with other factors such as coordinating policies and process to support transition. Many of the most successful institutes or companies relative to R2O cultivate a culture of transition with close ties and good communication between their research teams and operations teams. Our panel of experts will present their lessons learned and best practices for successful transition across agencies, sectors, and operational scales.