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When Weather Matters: Science and Services to Meet Critical Societal Needs (2010)

Chapter: Appendix D: Summer Study Statement of Task

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix D: Summer Study Statement of Task." National Research Council. 2010. When Weather Matters: Science and Services to Meet Critical Societal Needs. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12888.
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D
Summer Study Statement of Task

During the 1990s, the federal government supported a number of weather research and research-to-operations planning activities (e.g., the U.S. Weather Research Program; USWRP), to identify key gaps in the understanding and simulation of severe weather of all types and their societal impacts, seeking to accelerate the rate at which weather forecasts were improved. Priorities developed by the USWRP were the starting point for a number of efforts including field campaigns and testbeds. However, these priorities, which were identified in documents published by the USWRP “Prospectus Development Teams” (PDTs), were developed more than a decade ago.

This study will explore the status of weather research and the research-to-operations activities at the federal level. It will discuss whether USWRP priorities remain relevant and how they might evolve to better meet current interagency needs. The goal is not to critique USWRP documents written more than a decade ago or to provide a formal review of current planning documents, but rather to identify emerging agency priorities and opportunities for interagency collaboration. Using the PDTs and briefings on current agency activities as a starting point, the questions to be addressed include:

  1. What has been achieved?

  2. What has not been achieved?

  3. What is no longer relevant?

  4. What current issues were not anticipated when the PDTs were written (e.g., extreme weather in the context of climate change)?

  5. What could be done in the short term to reinvigorate agency and interagency planning for weather research and research-to-operations activities in the United States?

Suggested Citation:"Appendix D: Summer Study Statement of Task." National Research Council. 2010. When Weather Matters: Science and Services to Meet Critical Societal Needs. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12888.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix D: Summer Study Statement of Task." National Research Council. 2010. When Weather Matters: Science and Services to Meet Critical Societal Needs. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12888.
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Page 167
Suggested Citation:"Appendix D: Summer Study Statement of Task." National Research Council. 2010. When Weather Matters: Science and Services to Meet Critical Societal Needs. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12888.
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The past 15 years have seen marked progress in observing, understanding, and predicting weather. At the same time, the United States has failed to match or surpass progress in operational numerical weather prediction achieved by other nations and failed to realize its prediction potential; as a result, the nation is not mitigating weather impacts to the extent possible.

This book represents a sense of the weather community as guided by the discussions of a Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate community workshop held in summer 2009. The book puts forth the committee's judgment on the most pressing high level, weather-focused research challenges and research to operations needs, and makes corresponding recommendations. The book addresses issues including observations, global non-hydrostatic coupled modeling, data assimilation, probabilistic forecasting, and quantitative precipitation and hydrologic forecasting. The book also identifies three important, emerging issues—predictions of very high impact weather, urban meteorology, and renewable energy development—not recognized or emphasized in previous studies. Cutting across all of these challenges is a set of socioeconomic issues, whose importance and emphasis—while increasing—has been undervalued and underemphasized in the past and warrants greater recognition and priority today.

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