2014 AMS Annual Meeting

Program: Conferences, Symposia, and Town Halls

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Call for Papers

The Special Symposium on Severe Local Storms: The Current State of the Science and Understanding Impacts, sponsored by the American Meteorological Society, and organized by the AMS Committee on Severe Local Storms, will be held on 5 February 2014, as part of the 94th AMS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.  Preliminary programs, registration, hotel, and general information will be posted on the AMS Web site (http://www.ametsoc.org/meet/annual/) in late-September 2013.

The theme for the 2014 AMS Annual Meeting is “Extreme Weather—Climate and the Built Environment: New perspectives, opportunities, and tools.”. Herein, we broadly define weather and climate extreme events to include, but not be limited to, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, tropical cyclones, floods, winter storms, drought, temperature extremes, convective windstorms and derechoes, aircraft turbulence, wildfires, extreme solar activity, and ocean-land responses (e.g. storm surges, landslides, debris flows). Our society is a “built environment,” increasingly connected by cyber, energy, water, transportation, health, social, and other infrastructures—one that interacts with the natural environment through ecosystem functions supplied by wetlands, barrier islands, etc. The sustainability of this built environment and stewardship of our natural ecosystems are clearly related to quality of life. The theme is designed to explore the aforementioned “focal point” combining scientific inquiry, technological advances, societal implications, and public awareness through the lens of past, current, and future extreme weather and climate events.

Under the auspices of the proposed theme, traditional topics related to advances in observations, modeling, and applications can be explored. Additionally, the theme also allows for exploration of an array of topics including effective strategies for communication, social and policy theory, adaptation, mitigation, intervention, emergency response, and public behavior or perceptions. Further, the timelines of the topic and its broad accessibility to the scientific, stakeholder, and public communities should make it particularly appealing to many segments of our traditional AMS community as well as non-traditional communities. The theme is most relevant to the NOAA goal and the National Weather Service vision for “A Weather-Ready Nation – a society that is prepared for and responds to weather related events.”

The Special Symposium on Severe Local Storms: The Current State of the Science and Understanding Impacts, sponsored by the AMS Severe Local Storms Scientific and Technological Activities Committee, will be held in conjunction with the AMS 2014 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA on Wednesday, 5 February 2014.  This symposium capitalizes on the 2014 AMS Annual Meeting theme of "Extreme Weather – Climate and the Built Environment: New perspectives, Opportunities and Tools" by offering a one-day series of invited oral presentations and solicited poster presentations emphasizing the current state of severe local storm science and the impacts of severe local storms on infrastructure and society.

As part of this Special Symposium, there is a call for poster presentations. To align best with the AMS 2014 Annual Meeting theme, posters are specifically solicited in several topic areas, including applications of new and/or cutting-edge scientific methods or research to answer open questions germane to severe local storms, applications of new and/or cutting-edge technology (i.e. radar, remote sensing, information communication and dissemination, etc) in the arena of severe local storms, and examples and/or applications of strategies for mitigating adverse impacts from severe local storms.  

Posters that present research focused on the central Oklahoma tornadoes of 20 May and 31 May are also solicited.  These presentations will be considered for participation in a joint session with the Major Weather Events and Societal Impacts conference.

Other posters specific to general case studies or research specific to severe local storms are also welcome.  Poster submissions from students are strongly encouraged, and monetary awards will be given for the outstanding student poster presentations.

For additional information please contact the program chairpersons, Adam Houston (e-mail: [email protected]) or Dan Miller (e-mail: [email protected]).