APPENDIX B
Community Input Gathering
The Committee obtained a broad swath of input, guidance, and suggestions from the atmospheric chemistry community on important potential research topic and programmatic priorities for the coming decade. Six public town hall meetings were held throughout 2015 in several locations across the United States: Boulder, CO (March), Boston, MA (April), Washington, DC (April), Irvine, CA (May), Atlanta, GA (June), and Waterville Valley, NH (August). In addition, an online “virtual town hall”1 was established to solicit input from those who could not attend an in-person meeting. In all, more than 250 atmospheric chemistry research community members provided input to this study, either at one of the in-person meetings or via the website.
Participants were asked to provide feedback for the following five questions:
- What are the important areas of scientific research that could transform the understanding of atmospheric chemistry over the coming decade?
- What research linkages of atmospheric chemistry with other disciplines as well as with national or international research portfolios could produce transformational science over the next decade?
- How can advances in atmospheric chemistry, either alone or in tandem with other disciplines, play a critical role in addressing major societal challenges over the next decade?
- What infrastructure, new approaches, or other community capabilities, need to be maintained or developed to support advances in these topics? (You might consider shared models, facilities, platforms, instrumentation, or computing, but are not limited to these.)
- Do you have other comments pertinent to the Committee’s Statement of Task?
Input received by the Committee to these five questions formed the basis for the Committee’s discussions of future priorities in atmospheric chemistry research. The Committee sifted through this input, categorized it, and ultimately developed its own list of priority areas for research, as discussed in Chapter 5.1.
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1 The Future of Atmospheric Chemistry Research Virtual Town Hall: http://nas-sites.org/atmchem.
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