ESE/EPS 166 engages the new Harvard Climate Observatory that will fundamentally herald a new era in the quantitative dissection of the physics controlling critical climate systems. The central objective of the New Climate Observatory is to address this problem by introducing, for the first time, the development of a new generation of advanced technology that takes explicit advantage of recent major advances in laser systems, lidars, radars, nanoelectronics, photonics and optical designs in combination with advanced solar powered stratospheric aeronautical design. Together these enable a combination of long duration solar powered observing systems, each targeted at the highest priority risk factors that threaten global societal stability. The resulting observations will, for the first time, provide the irrefutable evidence needed for quantitative forecasts of the dominant risk factors stemming from the global use of fossil fuels.
While satellites have for years dominated the federal climate programs, for the purpose of developing tested and trusted quantitative forecasts of risk, satellites engender significant disadvantages. In sharp contrast to satellite systems, the new Harvard Climate Observatory provides, for the first time, orders of magnitude improvement in spatial and temporal resolution observations. ESE/EPS 166 will focus explicitly on this new generation of climate observations and forecasting.