NASA's new Earth System Observatory (ESO) will provide key information related to climate change, natural hazard mitigation, fighting forest fires, and improving real-time agricultural processes.

The Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) will address two of the five ESO areas of focus including:

- Aerosols: Answering the critical question of how aerosols determine air quality and affect the global energy balance, a key source of uncertainty in predicting climate change.

- Cloud, Convection, and Precipitation: Tackling one of the largest sources of uncertainty in future projections of climate change and targeting processes that influence the prediction of severe weather.