Deliver a Broad Suite of Improved Water Services to Support Management of the Nation's Water Supply

Whether too much, not enough, or of poor quality water is a major national challenge. Water for homes, agriculture, energy, and industry is already in short supply. In 2007 Atlanta, Georgia, came within three months of running out of water. Lake Superior, the Earth's largest freshwater body by surface area, was too shallow to float fully-loaded cargo ships, and a lack of water led regulators in Idaho, Arizona, and Montana to deny permits for new coal-fired power plants.A growing population and more frequent, persistent drought and flooding will only make the Nation's water management all the more challenging. Clean, safe water is also a growing challenge for communities and ecosystems. Water quality is being affected by changing water temperatures and an increase in salinity, nutrients, and other pollutants. This goal seeks to integrate and extend NWS water prediction capabilities to provide information and forecasts for a full suite of water services to better enable water resource managers to make preventative, proactive decisions in a changing and uncertain environment.

• Measures of Success: Less economic loss and property damage from flooding as a result of impact-based decision support; more efficient management of municipal water supplies using integrated water forecasts and information; positive economic, ecological, agricultural impacts realized from forecasting water temperature, soil moisture and other parameters

Objective. Develop cross-government, integrated water resource services
Achieving this objective will require many of the service strategies from other goals, along with the following:

• - Decision Support: Develop and deliver, with partners, decision support tools for water resource managers, focusing on climate-related impacts for arid and coastal watersheds, based on interoperable high resolution summit-to-sea water resources data and information from multiple government partners, including U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)
• - Water Resource Services: Expand services to provide forecasts for such parameters as water flow, temperature, quality, dissolved oxygen content, and soil moisture conditions for inland and coastal watersheds

Objective. Advance science and technology to improve and expand water forecasting
Achieving this objective will require many of the science and technology strategies from other goals, along with the following:

• - Research & Development: Advance understanding of precipitation, temperature, evaporation and other hydrologic processes in an Earth system framework; integrate into models
• - Observations: Leverage our partners' observations and expand our own river, surface, and remote observations
• - Modeling & Prediction
  • - Improve quantification of hydrologic forecast uncertainty and apply social science techniques to improve the communication of uncertainty
  • - Reduce hydrologic forecast uncertainty through cost-effective assimilation of all available informative data sources.
  • - Integrate long-range weather forecasting into hydrologic modeling
  • - Advance hydrologic and hydraulic modeling capabilities, including high and low flow, storm surge, and inundation mapping
  • - Implement higher resolution, coupled models for rivers, lakes, and estuaries
• - Partnerships: Advance hydrologic services by leveraging the science and technology of partners within NOAA, other agencies including the USGS and the USACE, the private sector, and academia