A safe space but not a soft landing: Observation needs for a warming world

The National Academy for Sciences Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Decadal Survey identifies directions for Earth Science across the federal government every ten years. As a part of this considerable effort, the community must assess the community's unmet needs, including spatial coverage, cadence for trend and anomaly detection, and locations of greatest importance. As a first-order discussion of the rapidly changing Earth system, we identify the high-level critical needs for Earth observation across scales and communities. This decadal survey will be different than before- assessing an unknown climate where the best we can hope for is a safe operating space.