2016 AMS Annual Meeting

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Sponsors and Organizers

The Special Symposium on Seamless Weather and Climate Prediction--Expectations and Limits of Multi-scale Predictability is sponsored by the American Meteorological Society.

Call for Papers

The theme for the 2016 AMS Annual Meeting, “Earth System Science in Service to Society”, weaves the many parts of AMS into a common core. Emphasizing the academic and research strength of AMS, the theme also connects that research to the benefits that society gains from our science. AMS merges the physical, chemical, and biological study of the Earth with human-centered “domains of action”: (1) Observing, (2) Analysis and research leading to understanding, (3) Modeling and prediction, and (4) Social sciences – how people deal with Earth. “Service to Society” explicitly evokes the integrated and complementary government and commercial enterprise that the AMS has done so much to foster over the last decade. The 2016 meeting integrates AMS’ proud, nearly 100-year history of making a positive difference in the lives of our citizens by continually communicating the advances of its science research to the public and policy makers.  

Through a mix of invited and contributed presentations, this special one-day symposium solicits papers on recent progress and challenges in seamless weather and climate prediction with particular emphasis on our current understanding of both the practical and intrinsic aspects of multi-scale atmospheric predictability for various weather and climate phenomena, including tornadic thunderstorms, mesoscale convective vortices, tropical cyclones, winter snowstorms, flooding, heat waves, droughts, MJOs, monsoons and ENSOs.  Practical predictability refers to the current capability of a forecast system or agency under best practice given state-of-the-art models with state-of-the-art initial and boundary conditions. Intrinsic predictability refers to the limit of prediction at different temporal and spatial scales given nearly perfect initial conditions and nearly perfect forecast models. Understanding the limits of intrinsic predictability is crucial in setting expectations and priorities for advancing deterministic forecasting (through better model, observing network and data assimilation) and in providing guidance on the design of advanced probabilistic and ensemble prediction.

The Special Symposium is organizing a joint session with the Committee on Boundary Layers and Turbulence on the "Grey Zone" problem.

Student presenter travel allowances will be available for student presenters to encourage their participation in this important interdisciplinary subject. 

Program Chair(s)

For additional information please contact co-chairs, Fuqing Zhang, Penn State University (814-865-0470) and Kerry Emanuel, MIT (617-253-2462).