Evolving the National Weather Service to Build a Weather-Ready Nation (Invited Presentation)

The National Weather Service has embarked on a major strategic effort to build a Weather-Ready Nation that connects improved observations, forecasts and warnings  to “Impact-Based Decision Support Services” (IDSS) provided to decision makers at the national, state and local level to save lives and mitigate property loss.  In this presentation, the basis for Building a Weather-Ready Nation will be discussed.  The talk will then the foundational role that observations, new data assimilation techniques and numerical modeling systems continue to play in the ongoing effort throughout the weather, water and climate enterprise to realize this ambitious strategic goal.  Ongoing and future efforts to improve the operational data assimilation and numerical models will be reviewed, along with the preparations being made by NOAA to fully utilize the upcoming array of new satellite data associated with the launches of JPSS, GOES-R, COSMIC 2 and JASON 3.