Scientific Challenges and Opportunities in the NASA Weather Focus Area (Invited Presentation)

In the past decade, climate and earth system research has received much more attention than weather research in the U.S. To accelerate weather-related research for the NASA Weather Focus Area, over 70 participants representing a cross section of the weather research community were invited to attend a community workshop in April 2015. Using NASA's capabilities in observations, modeling and data assimilation systems, instrument platforms, and computing facilities, 11 fundamental science questions were identified in four areas: weather prediction and predictability, convection and precipitation, planetary boundary layer and land/ocean surface processes, and clouds and radiation.

Complete answers to these questions require a broad range of investments, from making new observations designed to focus on processes at work in various parts of the Earth system, through systematic modeling studies designed to examine processes at the micro- and macro-scale, as well as in the context of the global weather. Seeking answers to these questions led to four recommendations for measurements and Observing System Simulation Experiments, and three recommendations for modeling, data assimilation, and computing.

These science questions and recommendations require NASA to work closely with other agencies, academia, the private sector, and international partners. While other federal agencies, and, to a lesser extent, the private sector, do weather research, NASA's unique role is to use its capabilities in instrument technology development and new mission conceptualization to pioneer the next generation of instrument platforms, observations, and modeling and data assimilation systems to address these science questions.