Dear AMS Members and Friends,

It is a great privilege and honor for me to send forth this letter as your President. I want to thank past presidents Marshall Shepherd, Bill Gail, and Sandy McDonald for all that they have taught me so far, and members of the AMS Council for their support and guidance.  I especially congratulate Sandy and his program committee for a stimulating and record-setting Annual Meeting in New Orleans in January.  The AMS Annual Meeting is the pinnacle of a full year of extremely hard work by hundreds of volunteers from the Society, supported by the amazing professional staff in Boston and Washington DC.

I hope to utilize their talents again to help organize an equally stimulating and productive Annual Meeting in Seattle this coming January.

Our Society is healthy and poised to continue its role as a leading scientific and professional society in the atmospheric and related sciences. Increasingly, our field is relevant to a growing array of researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and the public. Together we, as members of the academy, industry, federal sector, and the broadcast and stakeholder communities, must work to ensure a scientifically and technologically-rich, inclusive, and respected Society responsive to current and future challenges and opportunities. In addition, we are actively planning our Centennial Celebration for the year 2019, cumulating with the 2020 Annual Meeting in Boston.  Bill Gail is leading this effort, and he will be in contact with you soon so that all members have the opportunity to become involved in the many events.

I would like to say few words about our Annual Meeting and our awards/fellows nomination process. 

Annual Meeting: Our Annual Meeting is a large, complex effort that would simply not be possible without volunteers to organize and manage the conference. Our partners who provide sponsorship support, either as patrons of the Society, corporate members, or exhibitors at the conference or WeatherFest, are equally vital, and I extend a hearty THANK YOU to all of you. If you weren't able to attend, the Society has made most of the scientific presentations available on the AMS web site, https://ams.confex.com/ams/96Annual/webprogram/start.html.   This includes oral presentations (if permission was provided), extended abstracts, poster images and other handouts and supplementary material.  We hope this material is especially useful to members and colleagues that could not attend the meeting.  In addition, 2016 Annual Meeting Photos can be viewed on Flickr! – see if you can locate yourself!

My program committee, under the leadership of Chris Davis, Kim Klockow, and Russ Schumacher (and including Bob Atlas, Stacey Hitchcock, Jim Kinter, Trisha Palmer, Kevin Petty and Tom Schlatter), has been extremely busy planning the 2017 Annual Meeting, which will be held in Seattle, Washington (22-26 January). The theme for this meeting is “Observations Lead the Way”!  We believe this theme is relevant across all sectors of the Society and will stimulate much conversation and thought about how to increase our observational capabilities across the weather, water, and climate enterprise. In fact, we are asking each conference and symposium at the Annual Meeting to have a session on the greatest observational needs in their sub-disciplines.  In addition, the program committee is organizing two special symposia on observations and on the important roles social sciences can play going forward.  Details on these symposia will be available soon.  We look forward to your participation and any ideas that you may have.

Awards and Fellows - May 1st Deadline for Nominations Is Approaching:  One of the most rewarding aspects of the Society is to participate in the process of honoring peers and colleagues for their contributions to science, technology, communication, and education. Each year the AMS presents more than 35 awards to individuals, teams of people, and institutions for their outstanding contributions to the atmospheric and related sciences, as defined broadly by the Society. I encourage you to nominate scientists, practitioners, broadcasters, and others you believe are deserving of one or more of these prestigious awards. The awards are open to all sectors of the Society; academia, government, and industry.  For a listing and description of the awards (and to see previous award winners), please go to https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/about-ams/ams-awards-honors/. As a member of the Society, I ask that you familiarize yourself with these awards and encourage fellow colleagues to participate in the nominating process. 

Along with the awards, the advancement to Fellow is one of the most significant ways the AMS honors those members who, over a number of years, have made outstanding contributions. Our website notes that “New Fellows are elected each year by the Council at its fall meeting from a slate submitted by the Fellows Committee of not more than two-tenths of 1 percent of all AMS Members.” If you would like to recommend a member as a Fellow of the AMS, please fill out the online form and submit it with a one-page nomination letter. Three one-page letters of support (one which must be from an individual outside the nominee's home institution), should supplement the nomination. And, please remember, the nominee must be an AMS member. 

You can find information on the nominating process for both Awards and Fellows on the AMS website. All nominations must be submitted online by May 1st. A nomination letter, CV, and bibliography, along with three letters of support, are needed for most award nominations. 

In most cases, nominations remain on the committee's active list for three years; therefore, nominees who are not successful the first year will automatically be considered again for two more years. To preserve the integrity of the process, please take care not to share the nomination with the nominee. 

Noting that the three sectors of our enterprise (academic, public, private) are roughly the same size in terms of AMS membership, we encourage nominations for awards and election to Fellow for members in all sectors, including those in the "related sciences" of oceanography, hydrology, climatology, atmospheric chemistry, space weather, environmental remote sensing and the social sciences.  The AMS is a broad organization, inclusive of many disciplines, and we aspire the AMS to be a brand that signifies a wide-ranging scope of expertise and knowledge centered on the atmospheric and related sciences. 

We look forward to receiving your nominations and recommendations by the May 1st deadline. We also encourage your support of students who may be qualified for the more than 50 available AMS scholarships and fellowships (see https://wwwametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/information-for/students/ams-scholarships-and-fellowships/).

I am looking forward to serving as your President, and it is a major priority of mine to be as accessible as possible. You can learn more about some of my thoughts and goals for the Society in the January issue of the Bulletin of the AMS. The Society maintains contact information for me and the current Council at https://wwwametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/about-ams/ams-commissions-boards-and-committees/ams-council-and-executive-committee/, and I encourage you to share your thoughts and ideas with me.  I hope to meet many of you at the AMS Washington Forum, various specialty conferences, Summer Community Meeting, the next Annual Meeting, or at other venues. I pledge to uphold the reputation of this vibrant organization and continue to make sure that it is inclusive and relevant.

With Best Regards, 
Frederick H. Carr
President, American Meteorological Society