NCAR divisions, institutes, and laboratories have identified many opportunities where building out from existing programs and integrating expertise across disciplines could accelerate scientific progress and provide new information to address societal needs. The following frontiers, ranked in priority order, are particularly compelling near-term opportunities for program enhancement.

• Frontier #1: - Advance modeling and analysis focused on informing climate change adaptation and mitigation
• Frontier #2: - Conduct and enable studies of water resource availability, vulnerability and adaptation planning
• Frontier #3: - Develop and support new community tools for integrating Earth and Sun system measurements with models
• Frontier #4: - Promote new grid-based computing technologies for interacting with universities and the broader science and education community
• Frontier #5: - Develop methods to more accurately assess and predict wind and cloud cover in support of renewable energy industries. Understand the impacts of biofuels and other renewable energy technologies on water resources and regional climate