A panel presentation is proposed to share preliminary results from a series of stakeholder engagement sessions on prototype flash flood products as well as an initial ranking of existing, experimental, and potential new products/services across the entire spectrum of water resources needs as depicted in the above figure. Input will be solicited from participants in this session to obtain their views of priority needs and to their thoughts on the next steps for this assessment.

As decision-makers prepare for a changing climate or weather extremes, they look to the research community for answers to local or regional questions. Boundary organizations, such as U.S. DOI Climate Science Centers, NOAA Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments programs, USDA Climate Hubs, state climate offices, and others, are positioned to address these challenges through co-production of knowledge with researchers and stakeholders. That is, researchers affiliated with these weather and climate boundary organizations are engaging decision-makers directly in the research process. But co-production requires both of these groups to transform their traditional methods of communication (or lack thereof) with one another. Many of these organizations have hired communications specialists to help translate science into decisions or have developed training and outreach events that bring stakeholders and researchers together. These actions have enhanced communications between both groups, ultimately leading to long-term partnerships, more actionable research products, and better understanding of research needs. This session seeks to highlight examples of projects that have benefited from co-production of knowledge with decision-makers and boundary organizations, what methods of communication between these groups have been effective, and how to educate the next generation of leaders in co-producing knowledge.

Global food security represents a major societal challenge for the coming decades. Growing human population, increased demand for water and energy, and a changing climate have contributed to expanded concerns centered on food supply, production, resiliency, and price volatility. The global food system involves production and distribution with multiple stages in supply chains. Food security is inherently an issue involving natural aspects as well as social, economic, and political dimensions. There are opportunities to link environmental observations with social and economic data to generate information and provide insights to improve assessments of food security challenges and enhance agricultural practices. Earth observations and Earth science data, models, and knowledge provide essential information and tools to support the functioning and resilience of food systems. For example, Earth observations have proven helpful with estimations of crop area and cropping intensities, agricultural productivity assessments, water planning and irrigation management, and crop yield modeling on a range of time scales. New research continues to expand the areas in which Earth observation informs food security effort. This session explores how products enabled by Earth observations can help transform food security—especially when observations are combined with information on the broader food system. We further examine how uses of remote sensing and geospatial data can enhance organizations' planning and operations as well as support broader food security assessments, commodity pricing, risk assessments, and policy analysis. We invite submissions on (i) research advancing capabilities to apply Earth observation data within models and software tools to inform agricultural decision-making; (ii) research combining data, models, and methods derived from both social science and physical science to respond to food security challenges; and (iii) examples of programmatic and technical approaches to build capacity within the food security and agricultural community to harness Earth observations to inform decision-making.

Some in congress and the administration are proposing to pare back a number of budgets at NOAA, NASA, NSF, USGS, and other agencies and programs that compose the U.S. weather, water, and climate enterprise. What are the current proposals, and what is driving them? Where would budget cuts likely fall, and how might they impact the AMS community? How likely are they to come to pass? More broadly, how is the federal budget environment evolving over the long-term for the weather, water, and climate community, and what can we expect in 2018 and beyond? Come to this special session to hear from budget experts and policymakers about the current state of play and what else you should know if you care about federal support for the AMS community.

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2018 Haurwitz Lecture

As the twenty-first century progresses and economic growth continues in many parts of the world, there is more at stake—and more to lose—from extreme weather and climate events. While, fortunately, scientific advances and good policy decisions have been able to reduce loss of life from these events in many areas of the world, livelihoods, property assets, and infrastructure are increasingly vulnerable. At the same time, it is becoming hard to predict the patterns of these extremes. Past experience is no longer a reliable guide to their future severity or frequency. This situation calls for the building of resilience—the capacity of a system to continue to maintain its structure and function in the face of disturbance, while also keeping options open for future development. Building resilience does not mean building rigidity, however. Resilient systems must be more flexible, more nimble, and more responsive to changing economic and social conditions. One of the ways to build resilience and flexibility is to build effective networks of partners to catalyze rapid development and ongoing dissemination of information and best practices so that businesses, governments and households can respond in a timely way to changing conditions. Resources are finite, however. There are more and less efficient ways to organize and effectively build capacity and learning networks. In this session we focus on examples and lessons learned from building sustained partnerships for knowledge exchange and risk management across a variety of contexts and scales. Highlighting examples from (but not limited to) drought, wildfire, and coastal and inland flooding, we examine the value of sustained partnerships for avoiding damage and property loss, and ultimately, building resilience in an uncertain world. Papers from a wide variety of contexts and cases are encouraged.

Global food security represents a major societal challenge for the coming decades. Growing human population, increased demand for water and energy, and a changing climate have contributed to expanded concerns centered on food supply, production, resiliency, and price volatility. The global food system involves production and distribution with multiple stages in supply chains. Food security is inherently an issue involving natural aspects as well as social, economic, and political dimensions. There are opportunities to link environmental observations with social and economic data to generate information and provide insights to improve assessments of food security challenges and enhance agricultural practices.   Earth observations and Earth science data, models, and knowledge provide essential information and tools to support the functioning and resilience of food systems. For example, Earth observations have proven helpful with estimations of crop area and cropping intensities, agricultural productivity assessments, water planning and irrigation management, and crop yield modeling on a range of time scales. New research continues to expand the areas in which Earth observation informs food security effort. This session explores how products enabled by Earth observations can help transform food security—especially when observations are combined with information on the broader food system. We further examine how uses of remote sensing and geospatial data can enhance organizations' planning and operations, as well as support broader food security assessments, commodity pricing, risk assessments, and policy analysis. We invite submissions on (i) research advancing capabilities to apply Earth observation data within models and software tools to inform agricultural decision-making; (ii) research combining data, models, and methods derived from both social science and physical science to respond to food security challenges; (iii) examples of programmatic and technical approaches to build capacity within the food security and agricultural community to harness Earth observations to inform decision-making.

The Robert T. Ryan Symposium will conclude with a cocktail reception welcoming symposium attendees, along with Bob's numerous colleagues and former interns from across the weather enterprise. With a short program hosted by symposium co-chair and AMS Fellow Veronica Johnson of WJLA in Washington, D.C., this casual event will honor Bob for his distinguished career, achievements, and contributions to the American Meteorological Society.

We all crave to be understood and heard. But often in the science world, there is a gap between how we are communicating science and how the information is then received by its intended audience. Understanding how to effectively "mind the gap" between discussing science and the needs of users and decision makers is key to that rich and clear transmission of critical science information. If we know the needs our audience and have the tools to use to reach them, then we can develop effective science communication and hopefully begin to develop that two-way dialogue that can grow into extended engagement. Sessions under this topic could address how to understand the "why" of your audience, what are the best communication practices for reaching your audience, and how you effectively use storytelling and visualization to create connection.

Risks and opportunities with climate change is often referred to as the world’s biggest sustainability challenge. As the understanding of these risks and opportunities grow, access, use, communication, and decision-making based on meaningful climate and environmental information continues to be a critical component to advance decision-making by sector and industries, as well as broad investments in adaptation and resilience. To improve capacity building and spur catalytic activities in climate services, providers of the information have taken initiative to emphasize user-driven climate analysis through case studies, engagement discussions with business and industry leaders, cataloging and categorizing users, uses, and applications of climate data to assess risk, and investing in resilience in the face of climate variability. Solution providers are also demonstrating how industry in select sectors of the economy are using environmental information for analysis, planning, decision-making, investments, etc. This session invites providers of data, solution providers, and customers to discuss users and uses of environmental data, needs and requirements, assessment of climate impacts, and examples of innovative climate solutions to foster advancement in adaptation and resilience.

Improving the communication of forecast uncertainty remains a core priority for the weather enterprise as a whole (NAS 2006) and NOAA/NWS in particular (NOAA 2012). For the last 3 years, researchers working in NOAA's Hazardous Weather Testbed and Hydrometeorological Testbed have experimented with a variety of probabilistic tools, in time scales ranging from days to minutes, and explored the ways those tools can be used for forecasting and communication by NWS forecasters, emergency managers, and broadcast meteorologists. This session will report on key findings from these projects, documenting current trajectories of development and outstanding conceptual and technical challenges.

We encourage all attendees to take the opportunity to grab a snack and coffee and spend this extended afternoon break networking with colleagues and viewing the hundreds of posters on display in the poster hall. Poster displays are grouped by conference and change each day.

Posters Focusing on Societal Applications: Policy, Research, and Practice.

This session aims to grow the international weather and communication network while continuing to build the global knowledge base by sharing the latest research on communicating about High Impact Weather. This session is supported by the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) 10-year High Impact Weather (HIWeather) research program, which aims to “promote cooperative international research to achieve a dramatic increase in resilience to high impact weather." Within this program, the Communication Task Team is building capacity in communicating high impact weather information. This is being achieved by bringing together a range of international experts including stakeholders from weather services, the emergency management sector, social scientists, and other key practitioners and researchers, and applying new knowledge and developments in relation to content, language, format, public awareness and dissemination. Determining best practice in executing effective risk or impact based warnings in an end to end warning system context and/or how to apply skill in communicating uncertainty so that communities may better understand and respond to the risk from hazards. While we are keen to include any research on weather and communication, we are particularly interested in hearing from presenters about research and practice in the following areas, which align with the goals of the HIWeather programme: the role of social media, particularly for contributing to impact models and warnings; the influence of trust, salience, beliefs and other factors on communication; communicating uncertainty (including probabilities) and the implications of uncertainty in forecasts and warnings; post-event case studies on communication of weather information and usage of advice in decision-making; best practice in communication training sessions being held with meteorologists on communication; research on communication of hazards including urban flooding, localized extreme wind, disruptive winter weather, wildfire, and urban heat waves and air pollution. The communication task group brings stakeholders together through coordinated activities such as workshops and conference sessions, writing white papers/special issues in journals, and sharing good practice; developing communication projects; conducting surveys; and initiating training courses. For more information, visit https://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/wwrp/new/high_impact_weather_project.html. Please join us if you are interested in finding out more about the WMO HIWeather project and if you can contribute to this global initiative.

This session will showcase research that is building knowledge of indoor thermal environments, including the association between outdoor and indoor conditions, indoor health and well-being, measurements and models of the indoor environment, and the use and impact of services such as energy assistance and weatherization programs. Presentations discussing best practices for collaboration and communicating findings and risks across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries are encouraged.

This themed joint session will focus on the multi-faceted reasons for and ways that populations might be challenged to prepare for, cope with, recover from, and thrive when faced with weather hazards and with a changing climate. The role of communication messages and sources in reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience at individual, community, and organizational scales will be particularly emphasized.

With the changing risk exposure to extreme events, there is heightened awareness among water utilities that they need to plan for future extremes. The goal of this session is to demonstrate how water utilities are incorporating weather and climate information in their short- and long-term planning. A panel of water utility managers/operators as well as researchers will focus on NOAA data, applications and activities such as the NOAA Water Initiative, NOAA Water Resources Dashboard (https://toolkit.climate.gov/topics/water/water-resources-dashboard), and regional activities (e.g., the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISAs), River Forecast Centers, etc.). Panelists will share how they are currently engaging and using climate information to address their operational challenges, and their critical information gaps. Panel members will be chosen from submitted abstracts; those not chosen will be part of a poster session.

We encourage all attendees to take the opportunity to grab a snack and coffee and spend this extended afternoon break networking with colleagues and viewing the hundreds of posters on display in the poster hall. Poster displays are grouped by conference and change each day.

With the changing risk exposure to extreme events, there is heightened awareness among water utilities that they need to plan for future extremes. The goal of this session is to demonstrate how water utilities are incorporating weather and climate information in their short- and long-term planning. A panel of water utility managers/operators as well as researchers will focus on NOAA data, applications and activities such as the NOAA Water Initiative, NOAA Water Resources Dashboard (https://toolkit.climate.gov/topics/water/water-resources-dashboard), and regional activities [e.g., the Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISAs), River Forecast Centers, etc.]. Panelists will share how they are currently engaging and using climate information to address their operational challenges, and their critical information gaps. Panel members will be chosen from submitted abstracts; those not chosen will be part of a poster session.