2014 AMS Annual Meeting

Recent headlines provide ample evidence that weather-climate extremes are increasingly having an enormous impact on the built environment…

White House warns of rising threat to power grid from extreme weather

            Historic Drought Ravages Southwest US

Drought shrivels harvest in Central Europe

Namibia Faces Worst Drought in 30 Years

Coastal cities face $1tn floods by 2050

Flooding Prompts Emergency in Far East

Flood affects over 100000 people in Pakistan

Extreme weather focus of summit

This year’s theme is timely and critical: With a focus on weather-climate extremes and the built environment, the 94th Annual Meeting provides an exciting and unique opportunity for AMS members—individuals and organizations—to build partnerships and alliances to understand, prepare for, and reduce the risks associated with past, current, and future patterns of extreme events. The Annual Meeting in also provides an opportunity to reflect upon the accomplishments of the past, take stock of our current capabilities, and bolster our Society’s numerous roles in addressing future challenges and opportunities to enhance the resilience of the communities, businesses, infrastructure, and natural resources that characterize the built environment in which we live and thrive.

We all can make a difference: The 2014 Annual Meeting provides an opportunity to highlight progress in observations, data stewardship, research, modeling, assessment, applications, social sciences, decision support, and policy development. Participants will be able to delve deeply into the details of individual disciplines as well as opportunities for new insights and future accomplishments associated with interdisciplinary science, assessment, education, and dialogue. During the Annual Meeting, two Joint Sessions have been formally organized in concert with the Presidential Forum:

• Super Storm Sandy Symposium on Thursday
• International Panel Discussion: Climate Services to Support Risk-Informed Decision Making for Building Resilience to Weather Extremes in a Changing Climate on Tuesday afternoon

In addition, several technical conferences have joined forces to hold themed Joint Sessions that highlight specific areas of past success, current challenges, and future opportunities. The diverse topics for these Joint Sessions include the following:

• the IPCC’s AR5, as well as the ongoing Third U.S. National Climate Assessment;

• identifying the needs and opportunities of small- and medium-sized communities for data, information, and integrated tools for enhanced decision support;
• interdisciplinary research and education on precipitation prediction and extremes;
• satellite technology advances;
• history of urban climate research;
• impacts of aerosols on storm dynamics, cloud physics and precipitation;
• aerosol formation and the impacts on clouds and climate and
• use and applications of climatologies and hydrologic forecasts and understanding in managing water resources.