JPSS Science Outreach: Building Awareness and Facilitating Public Understanding of NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System's Proving Ground and Risk Reduction (PGRR) Program

The U.S. Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) focuses on promoting the use of its data for meteorological and non-meteorological applications. The JPSS Proving Ground and Risk Reduction (PGRR) program has established initiative teams to work with users on creating and improving applications, products and services. These initiatives have produced spectacular and successful applications that are being used routinely. To promote PGRR successes and the importance of PGRR applications, there are multiple JPSS Science outreach efforts including published documents, meetings, conferences, workshops, and seminars of interest to user communities and beyond.

The JPSS Science outreach efforts showcase the importance of earth observation satellites; most notably polar-orbiting weather satellites which are ideal for monitoring the entire planet given a combination of relatively good spatial resolution and large cross orbital swaths. The efforts aspire to build awareness and facilitate the public’s understanding of the PGRR program’s science activities. A prominent example, the JPSS Annual Science Digest, conveys the expanded use of JPSS derived products and applications in environmental applications far beyond meteorology. These non-meteorological applications include flood monitoring, sea and river ice monitoring, forest fires detection, observation and damage assessment, trace gases, droughts, volcanic processes observation, and many more.