Save the Date: April 3-4, 2018

Hill briefing: Wednesday, April 4th from 2:30 - 4 PM in Capitol Visitor's Center, Room SVC-201-00

**You must RSVP with your first and last name to [email protected] in order to attend the hill briefing**

Location: 1200 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20005 in the auditorium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science building

Registration: Click here

Background: In times of record breaking floods and droughts, policymakers and the public are becoming increasingly aware of the need to improve the operation of the nation’s water resources. To maintain access to reliable and affordable water supply, water managers must regularly make decisions under uncertainty. Weather and water forecasts are important tools to minimize this uncertainty but can be difficult to incorporate into decision-making processes.

In an effort to address this challenge, NOAA recently created the National Water Center to bring together scientists from different agencies and produce the first continental United States water forecast. Additionally, the 2017 Weather Act requests NOAA to improve forecasts on subseasonal and seasonal time scales which could be instrumental to future water resource management.

Bringing together scientists and managers from across the United States, the primary goal for this workshop is to identify opportunities for more effective collaboration between forecasters and water managers. During the workshop, we will take stock of the current quality and use of weather and streamflow forecasts in different regions on different time scales (days to months).

 

Topics of interest:

• How can forecasts become more useful to water managers?
• How can decision-making processes take full advantage of available forecasts?
• How can forecasters and water managers work together to best take advantage of future improvements in in forecast skill?
• How will subseasonal and seasonal forecasts develop? How will they affect water resource managers?
• What are the most promising place-based and federal policy options for reducing future U.S. risk? How do public, private and academic partnerships fit into these policy options?

 

Agenda

 

 

Tuesday April 3, 2018

7:45 AM         Registration and light breakfast

8:30 AM         Welcome

Paul Higgins, Director, AMS Policy Program

8:35 AM         Overview

Annalise Blum, Postdoctoral fellow, AMS Policy Program and Johns Hopkins

Andy Miller, Postdoctoral fellow, AMS Policy Program

Operations: State of the art forecasts and their use in water management

Ron Anderson, Lower Colorado River Authority

Rob Shedd, Mid-Atlantic River Forecast Center

Steve King, Northwest River Forecast Center

Cherie Schultz, Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin

9:45 AM         Discussion

10:30 AM       Break

11:00 AM       Keynote: The role of the National Water Center

Peter Colohan, National Water Center

11:30 AM       Discussion

12:00 PM       Networking lunch

1:00 PM                     How could forecasts be more useful to water managers? How can                                               decision-making processes take advantage of available forecasts?

Kenneth Nowak, Bureau of Reclamation

Jim Porter, NY Department of Water

                        Curtis Jawdy, Tennessee Valley Authority

1:45 PM         Discussion

2:30 PM                     Break

3:00 PM         Looking to the future I: Given advancements in modeling, how do we expect forecasts to improve?

Sarah Kapnick, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA

Andrew Robertson, Columbia University

Bart Nijssen, University of Washington

3:45 PM         Discussion

4:30 PM         End of Day 1

Wednesday April 4, 2018

8:00 AM         Light breakfast and networking

8:30 AM         Review of yesterday

Bill Hooke, Associate Executive Director, AMS Policy Program

8:45 AM        What are the policy challenges and opportunities in translating

forecasts to inform water management?

Betsy Cody, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC)

Jeanine Jones, Western States Water Council

Sara Gonzalez-Rothi, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation

9:30 AM         Discussion

10:15 AM       Break

10:45 AM       Looking to the future II:  New data to meet information needs of water resource managers

Julie Kiang, U.S. Geological Survey

Dan Sheer, HydroLogics

Kristi Arsenault, Science Applications International Corporation

11:30 AM       Discussion

12:15 PM                   Synthesis and conclusion

Andy Miller and Annalise Blum, Postdoctoral fellows, AMS Policy Program

12:30 PM       Workshop concludes

 

2:30-4:00 PM   Hill briefing, Capitol Visitor’s Center, Room SVC 201-00