NESDIS: First Year Perspective (Invited Presentation)

The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) is dedicated to providing timely access to global environmental data from satellites and other sources to promote, protect, and enhance the Nation's economy, security, environment, and quality of life. To fulfill its responsibilities, NESDIS acquires and manages the Nation's operational environmental satellites, operates the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, provides data and information services including Earth system monitoring, performs official assessments of the environment, and conducts related research.

In this talk, Dr. Stephen Volz, NESDIS Assistant Administrator, will discuss near-term NESDIS activities within the context of broader NESDIS strategic planning, including his vision for NESDIS beyond the coming decade.

2015 saw numerous NESDIS activities that made an impact on the Earth observation and forecasting communities: a NESDIS reorganization focused on increasing ground services and enterprise systems engineering capabilities, release of the BAMS State of the Climate in 2014 showed record temperatures around the globe, a successful NOAA satellite conference prepared users for the new capabilities coming with JPSS and GOES-R, a workshop addressed NESDIS' plans and direction in use of commercial sector capabilities, the Coordination Group on Meteorological Satellites 43rd Plenary Session was hosted by NOAA, and DSCOVR, the nation's first operational space weather satellite, was successfully launched.

NESDIS activities in 2016 and beyond will build on these developments to further benefit the meteorological community, including the launches of Jason-3, GOES-R, COSMIC-2, and JPSS-1. These satellites bring advanced capabilities that will continue to be the backbone of space-based environmental information provided by NOAA. Meanwhile, NESDIS is looking toward the 2030s and beyond, conducting bottoms-up space segment architecture studies, implementing an enterprise ground system, participating in the National Research Council's second Earth Science and Applications from Space Decadal Survey, and considering how non-NOAA sources of data, including commercial data, can contribute to the NOAA mission.