Enhancing Global Food Security: Opportunities for the American Meteorological Society.

Food security is a key pillar of environmental security yet remains one of the world's greatest challenges. Its obverse, food insecurity, negatively impacts health and well-being, drives mass migration, and undermines national security and global sustainable development. Ensuring food security is a delicate balance of myriad concerns within the atmospheric and Earth sciences, agronomy and agriculture engineering, social sciences, economics, monitoring, and policymaking. A Food Security Presidential Session at the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) 2022 Annual Meeting brought together experts across disciplines to tackle issues at the nexus of weather, climate, and food security. The starkest takeaway was the realization that, despite its importance and clear roles for the atmospheric and climate sciences, food security has not been a focus for the AMS community. The aim of this paper is to build on the perspectives shared by this expert panel and to identify overlapping issues and key points of intersection between the food-security community and AMS. We examine 1) the interactions between weather, climate, and the food system and how they influence food security; 2) the time and spatial scales of food security decision support that match weather and climate phenomena; 3) the role of both providers and users of information as well as decision-makers in improving research to operations for food security; and 4) the opportunities for the AMS community to address food security. We conclude that, moving forward, the AMS community is well-positioned to scale up its engagement across the global food system to address existing scientific needs and technology gaps to improve global food security. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: We examine how members of the AMS community can help ensure global food security, whether they are engaged in the physical and social sciences or the realms of policy and society. Inspired by the messages of panelists at a Presidential Forum on Food Security at the 2022 AMS Annual Meeting, we gather their perspectives and those of experts working in the various relevant fields and find that there are roles for everyone across the AMS—from providing forecasts of the hydrometeorological variables used in food security outlooks to converting data to knowledge and engaging with stakeholders and decision-makers. We make concrete suggestions to ensure the AMS and its members are fully engaged in feeding the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]