Weather and Society Integrated Studies

WAS*IS was formed to build an interdisciplinary community of practitioners, researchers and decision makers collaborating to effectively understand how to improve weather warnings, incorporate societal impacts into weather forecasts, and use social science tools and methods.

[2] WAS*IS has 276 representatives from the United States, Canada, China, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the Netherlands, and numerous Caribbean countries.

WAS*ISers come from many parts of the weather enterprise, including meteorology, emergency management, hydrology, geography, climatology, psychology, sociology, economics, ecology, education and anthropology.

Dr. Gruntfest was inspired by the comments of physical scientists she met during her career who were interested in integrating meteorology and social science but were unsure how to do the work, and did not know anyone else involved in societal impacts research or practice.

WAS*IS has received support from the US Weather Research Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA, NCAR's Societal Impacts Program, the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and NCAR's Institute for the Study of Society and Environment.