DOCUMENTING AND ENABLING IMPROVED OBSERVATIONALLY BASED PREDICTIONS OF WATER AND ENERGY CYCLE CONSEQUENCES OF EARTH SYSTEM VARIABILITY AND CHANGE (NEWS GRAND CHALLENGE) REQUIRES AN ACCURATE SPATIAL-TEMPORAL ACCOUNTING OF GLOBAL WATER AND ENERGY CYCLE (WEC) RESERVOIRS AND FLUXES. TO ACCOMPLISH THIS GOAL WE MUST CONTINUALLY UPDATE AND IMPROVE THESE FOUNDATIONAL BENCHMARKS USING THE MOST ADVANCED SPACE- AND GROUND-BASED MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS TO SERVE AS A BASELINE FOR STUDIES OF WEC CHANGE AND FOR EVALUATING WEATHER AND CLIMATE PREDICTION MODELS. THEREFORE THIS PROJECT WILL DESIGN DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT A DYNAMIC STATE OF THE GLOBAL WATER AND ENERGY CYCLE (SWEC) ASSESSMENT BASED ON THE MOST ADVANCED OBSERVATIONS MODELS AND CONSERVATION CONCEPTS. THE SWEC WILL BUILD ON PREVIOUS NEWS EFFORTS BY DEVELOPING: (A) A MULTI-PRODUCT WEC CLIMATOLOGY MATRIX ACCOUNTING (B) TIME-SERIES TREND AND VARIABILITY ASSESSMENT AND (C) REGIONAL WATER AND ENERGY ASSESSMENTS. RATHER THAN TRYING TO IDENTIFY THE BEST PRODUCTS FOR A GIVEN WEC GEOPHYSICAL VARIABLE (I.E. PRECIPITATION EVAPORATION RADIATION ETC.) SWEC WILL STUDY HOW VARIOUS COMBINATIONS OF PRODUCTS EFFECT WEC BUDGET CLOSURE AT VARIOUS TIME-SPACE SCALES. SWEC WILL ALSO BE DESIGNED AROUND A DYNAMIC FRAMEWORK - ALLOWING FOR NEW DATASETS TO BE INCLUDED AS THEY BECOME AVAILABLE AND WILL SPECIFICALLY INCLUDE RECENTLY DEVELOPED NASA-MEASURES DATASETS. UNCERTAINTY ESTIMATES FOR EACH ASSESSMENT WILL BE ASSESSED AND FOLLOWING PREVIOUS NEWS CLIMATOLOGY WORKING GROUP WORK (RODELL ET AL. 2013) MASS/ENERGY CONSERVING WEC ASSESSMENTS WILL BE MADE FOR EACH PRODUCT COMBINATION. SUBSEQUENT ANALYSIS OF THESE INTEGRATED COMPONENTS WILL ALLOW FOR EVALUATION OF OUR CURRENT ABILITY TO DETECT ANALYZE UNDERSTAND AND EXPLAIN GLOBAL WEC CHANGE VARIABILITY PREDICTION AND PREDICTABILITY. THERE CURRENTLY EXISTS NO ONGOING COMPREHENSIVE EFFORT TO INTEGRATE MODEL REMOTE-SENSING AND IN-SITU DATASETS INTO AN ASSESSMENT THAT QUANTIFIES THE RATE AND VARIATION OF GLOBAL WATER AND ENERGY CYCLING SO THE PROPOSED SWEC ASSESSMENT FILLS A CRITICAL GAP IN THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY AND DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTES TO NEWS. INTEGRAL TO THIS EFFORT WILL BE THE ACTIVE COORDINATION OF THE NEWS TEAM; IT IS ONLY THROUGH PROACTIVE COORDINATION BETWEEN NEWS PROJECTS THAT WE CAN INTEGRATE NASA S GLOBAL WEC RESOURCES TO DIRECTLY ADDRESS THE NEWS CHALLENGE. TO THIS END I PROPOSE TO HELP COORDINATE THIS TEAM BY SUBMITTING AN APPLICATION FOR NEWS TEAM LEADER. BY CLOSELY COORDINATING THE NEWS TEAM EFFORTS AND CONDUCTING REGULAR NEWS COMMUNICATIONS I WILL PROVIDE MANAGEMENT AND DIRECTION TO HELP COORDINATE THE NEWS TEAM EFFORTS TOWARDS ADDRESSING THE NEWS GRAND CHALLENGE. MY LONG ASSOCIATION AND LEADERSHIP OF NEWS NASA AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL PROGRAMS GIVES ME A UNIQUE ABILITY TO SERVE IN THIS ROLE AND ENABLE VALUE-ADDED COORDINATION THAT WILL OPTIMIZE THE NEWS TEAM S INTEGRATION AND CONTRIBUTIONS.