We are entering a new era in technological innovation and in use and integration of different sources of information for the wellbeing of society and their ability to cope with multi-hazards. New predictive tools that will detail weather conditions down to neighbourhood and street level, and provide early warnings a month ahead, and forecasts from rainfall to energy consumption will be some of the main outcome of the research activities in weather science over the next decade. A better understanding of small-scale processes and their inherent predictability should go together with a better comprehension of how weather related information influence decisional processes and with a better communication strategy.
As weather science advances, critical questions are arising such as about the possible sources of predictability on weekly, monthly and longer time-scales; seamless prediction; the development and application of new observing systems; the effective utilization of massively-parallel supercomputers; the communication, interpretation, and application of weather-related information; and the quantification of the societal impacts. The science is primed for a step forward informed by the realization that there can be predictive power on all space and time-scales arising from currently poorly-understood sources of potential predictability.
Consequently the time is right for examining the rapidly changing scientific and socio-economic drivers of weather science, and the need of new technological frameworks.