Conference theme

Serving Society with better Weather and Climate Information.

A key challenge for the meteorological and climatological communities is how best to harness the wealth of data now available – both observational and modelled – to generate and communicate effectively relevant, tailored, and timely information, ensuring the highest-quality support for users' decision-making.

This is relevant for the whole spectrum of users: from specific user groups such as the emergency management agencies, local planners and enterprises that are weather sensitive, to individual members of the general public. Realizing the value of meteorological and climate information to government, industry, and all sectors of society is the focus of this conference.

Some of the prevalent issues to be discussed include:

Observation data: How can the basic monitoring systems of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services [NMHSs] be enhanced by (a) incorporating data from other networks (e.g. road weather) or sources and (b) the deployment of resilient technological solutions to support the real-time collection, analysis, visualization, and dissemination of high-quality and high-resolution (spatial and temporal) observation data compatible with improved model assimilation systems?
Instrumentation: How can the meteorological community engage collaboratively in research and development projects with manufacturers, software developers, service providers, and other organizations in order to provide better operational weather and climate services at national and international level?
User focus and support tools: How can users define their information needs, how can they have access to or receive the data and information, and how can they use this information and the data appropriately? How can users effectively and efficiently discover what is available from the meteorological and climatological communities? What traditional and non-traditional modes of dissemination services do users want/need?
Big data: How can they be harnessed, what can they tell users, what are the strategies and platforms to combine them, and what are the challenges for accessing and combining versatile data? What is the role of novel data collection routes from non-traditional sources (i.e. energy, transport, agriculture, volunteer citizens)?
Open data: How free can they be, what are the limitations, and who decides?
Does the generated and delivered information address the needs of specific users and society at large? Is there a difference? Does this require different approaches, formats, and concepts (also on outreach and collaboration)?
Communication: How can weather and climate information be communicated better to a variety of end users and sectoral interests? The best data/information are of little use if they are delivered in a manner which the end user does not understand. Users (and practitioners) need to be better informed of uncertainty in products and how to build them into their decision-making systems.
Decision-making under uncertainty: Meteorology and climatology are inherently uncertain. Even when uncertainties are quantified, their uptake and effective use is mixed. How can uncertainties be provided in more useable formats and their use assured to enable effective decision-making under uncertainty?
Weather and climate predictions and projections: Improving and extending the skill of weather and climate predictions and related information to make them more useful and meaningful to the (end) users; addressing the evolving needs of society for relevant information and ensuring that operational meteorology and climatology are aware of the changing needs of society and how we can inform them about our capacities.