Enable Integrated Environmental Services Supporting Healthy Communities and Ecosystems

High-impact, weather-related events, such as extreme temperatures, poor air quality, and the transmission of air and water-borne diseases, pose significant risks to the health of individuals and communities. As of 2008, approximately 127 million U.S. residents live in counties where air pollution exceeds national standards, causing decreases in lung function, more frequent asthma-related hospital visits and even premature death. Even daily management of chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, are affected by temperature, precipitation, and humidity. These elements also affect the timing and intensity of infectious disease outbreaks, and changes in climate may alter their geographic range and evolution. More frequent heavy rains and flooding can trigger sewage overflows, spilling raw sewage into drinking water supplies, lakes and waterways, and beaches. Other pollutants in our inland and coastal waterways cause harmful algal blooms, dead zones, human illnesses, and concerns about the safety of seafood harvests. This goal seeks to support NOAA and other partners by linking weather, water, and climate with biological, chemical, ecological, and other processes to reduce the impact of health and environmental hazards on our communities and ecosystems.

• Measures of Success: Health care providers are prepared for patients with weather and climate-sensitive illnesses, including air pollution and extreme temperatures, due to health-based forecasts; decreased occurrence of water-borne illnesses due to improved water and beach quality forecasts

Objective: Extend weather, water, and climate services to provide ecological and health-based forecasts and services

Achieving this objective will require many of the strategies from other goals, along with the following:

• - Decision Support: Expand outreach and decision support services in collaboration with our partners for persistent events, such as extreme heat or cold; seasonal flooding; drought
• - Partnerships: Expand and build partnerships with local, regional, and national health, water and environmental managers to better understand and meet weather, water, and climate needs and explore new opportunities for collaboration

Targeted areas for improvement include:

• - Health-Based Forecasts: Deliver, with NOAA and partners, information integrated to meet regional forecast needs, including: high resolution ozone, smoke, dust, and particulate matter forecasts; extreme temperatures; and the progression of insect and water-borne diseases
• - Ecological Forecasts: Contribute, with NOAA and partners, the operational backbone for a defined suite of integrated ocean and coastal ecological forecasts and services, based on NOAA priority forecast areas of beach quality, species progression, dead zones, harmful algal blooms, and disease pathogen progression

Objective:  Harness evolving capabilities to enable ecological prediction

Achieving this objective will require many of the strategies from other goals, along with the following:

• - Research & Development:
• - Research and develop, with NOAA and partners, ecological predictions, what-if scenarios, and projections
• - Improve climate, water, and weather forecasts for multiple time and space scales relevant to health risks and disease control impacting communities and ecosystems
• - Observations: Expand weather, climate, and air quality observations to support environmental surveillance relevant to, and in partnership with, public health agencies
• - Modeling:
• - Integrate long-range weather into ecological modeling within an Earth system framework
• - Contribute to improving regional ocean, estuary, and coastal circulation models, including biogeochemistry and ecosystem processes
• - Research to Operations: Implement testbed framework to accelerate transition of ecosystem and  health prototypes into operations and services

Targeted areas for improvement include:

• - Air Quality: Expand air quality predictions for ozone, smoke, dust, and particulate matter, including research and development of airborne particulate matter, chemical data assimilation, and coupled meteorological and air quality predictions
• - Ecological Forecasting: Initiate development of an ecological forecasting system, coupling air, land and water with biological, geological, chemical, and ecosystem processes