Future Directions

NOAA developed its 2006-2011 Strategic Plan (697KB, to explain how NOAA will respond to mandates from Congress and will prioritize its goals for five years. The Strategic Plan provides priorities and strategies to guide mission requirements in each of the five NOAA strategic goals:

• Ecosystems — Protect, restore, and manage use of coastal and ocean resources through ecosystem-based management.
• Climate — Understand climate variability and change, to enhance society's ability to plan and respond.
• Weather and Water — Serve society's needs for weather and water information.
• Commerce and Transportation — Support the nation's commerce with information for safe, efficient, and environmentally sound transportation.
• Critical Support — Provide support for NOAA's mission, including its observing systems, which are critical for obtaining measurements of more than 500 environmental properties.

In its Five-Year Research Plan (2008-2012) (PDF, 304 KB), NOAA highlighted the importance of developing an integrated observing system on both local and global scales. NOAA also produces a twenty-year "Research Vision" which provides the "big picture" of where NOAA will go and the role that research will play. The NOAA Administrator also distributes his Annual Guidance Memorandum that relays his priorities to his organization for the year. At the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in January 2005, the NOAA Deputy Under Secretary stressed the following areas as NOAA priorities:

• Early warning for temperature, humidity, vegetation, soil moisture
• Air quality — wet deposition trends, composition of aerosols, global distribution of ozone, forest fires
• Sustainable agriculture practices
• Programs to acquire satellites