Environmental Prediction Into the Next Decade

Environmental Prediction into the Next Decade: Weather, Climate, Water and the Air We Breathe

First Announcement

16-17 November 2009 Incheon (Seoul), Republic of Korea

Countries around the world are facing an ever-growing need to cope with the increase in frequency of high impact hydro-meteorological and environmental events and their human and economic consequences. This growing need is driven by the human dimension that includes the exponential growth of the world’s population, changes in land use and demographic shifts that concentrate populations into urban locations, flood plains, coastal regions and other vulnerable areas. The accumulation of long-lived green house gases in the atmosphere and further climate change is also thought to increase high impact events around the globe. The motivation for sustainable socioeconomic development has also created new pressures for reliable information for decision and policy makers on wind and solar energy, river flow and basin discharge, agriculture, and a host of other applications.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is addressing the above set of needs by coordinating the enhancement of timely and accurate predictions for weather, climate, water and air quality. More timely and accurate predictions are needed for decision makers to be able to take the required, well-informed measures for protection of their populations and to reduce economic losses.

The WMO is organizing the Technical Conference “Environmental Prediction into the Next Decade: Weather, Climate, Water and the Air We Breathe” in connection with the Fifteenth session of the Commission for Atmospheric Sciences, CAS XV, to be held 18-25 Nov 2009 at the same location. This Technical Conference will present a vision for prediction systems of the future through focusing on selected research activities of CAS: the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) programme and its GAW Urban Research Meteorology and Environment (GURME) project, the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP), the WWRP-THORPEX programme, and the overlap of these activities with the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).

The conference will consist of key-note talks, oral presentations and a poster session. The topics will include:

 Activities, plans and needs of Members supporting environmental prediction into the next decade.

 The next generation of regional prediction systems for weather, water, ocean and air quality applications to meet growing user demands for prediction including for multi-hazards in urban areas.

 Collaboration between air chemistry, weather, water, ocean and climate research to further the concept of seamless prediction to meet user needs for improved global prediction systems.

The Conference co-chairs are Dr Gilbert Brunet of Environment Canada, Prof Øystein Hov of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and Dr. Haman Cho of the Korea Meteorological Administration. Limited funding will be available for participation by request to WMO.

For further enquiries about the conference, please contact Dr David Parsons at [email protected] or Dr Liisa Jalkanen at [email protected].