To: Atmospheric Sciences faculty, students, and staff. From: Greg Hakim. Subject: 2004 UCAR Members Meeting. On 12--13 October I attended the UCAR Annual Members Meeting as a representative of UW. In accordance with my responsibilities as a Members Representative, I am sending this (long) email to report to you on the activities of this meeting. As I did in last year's report, I'll preface my summary with a little background for those not familiar with UCAR; you may skip to the next paragraph if you're familiar with UCAR. UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) is a non-profit corporation that has, among other things, a term contract with the NSF to oversee NCAR. UCAR has a board of directors, called Trustees, that manage the business of UCAR by interacting with the executives of the corporation. These Trustees are elected by representatives of the stakeholders, who are the member institutions that pay dues for these privileges. The annual meeting provides the opportunity for members to elect Trustees and receive briefings on the activities of UCAR and NCAR during the past year. The meeting forum this year dealt with the future of the geosciences, and the role of UCAR/NCAR from this broad perspective. UCAR President Rick Anthes led off the forum with an overview of environmental change associated with increasing human population. He argued that the "earth information system" should provide tools for society to understand these changes, and that UCAR's response should involve building connections among the scientific disciplines. Kelvin Droegemeier (U. Oklahoma) summarized the looming competition for the management of NCAR, which will happen for the first time ever in 2006-2008. It is possible, if not likely, that UCAR will face competing bids. In particular, Battelle, a growing non-profit corporation, is known to be looking into NCAR; they have taken over three national labs in recent years. Cliff Jacobs (NSF) indicated that competition for lab management is the default NSF policy, and that this issue involves management, not science. He expects the lead-up will involve a review of NCAR science and facilities, an updated strategic plan, and a request for bids; the criteria for awarding the contract have not been set. Cliff also indicated that the Lower Atmosphere section of NSF/ATM recently consolidated the meteorology units by combining Climate Dynamics with Large-Scale Dynamical Meteorology, and Mesoscale Dynamical Meteorology with Physical Meteorology. These speakers were followed by two panel discussions on the role of the National Center in the Future of the Geosciences; the first panel consisted of senior administrators and university faculty, and the second consisted of junior NCAR scientists and university faculty. In the first panel, Neal Lane (Rice U.; former NSF director) wondered if there may not be too many national labs, and the impact that restricted information flow will have on the future of science. Tim Killeen suggested that NCAR is optimized to support universities, and seeks deeper connections in areas such as undergraduate education. He suggested that NCAR is a model of diversity and integration, although the institution must guard against complacency and mission creep. Sepi Yalda (Millersville U.) suggested that the strengths of NCAR include Unidata, the Earth Observing Lab, and UCAR educational materials; she also noted a need for interdisciplinary educational material, and undergraduate research at NCAR. Kaye Howe (NSF National Science Digital Library) acknowledged UCAR for enormous generosity in it's educational interests, and noted difficult issues for K12 teachers including isolation, lack of time, and lack of resources. The junior panel focused quite a bit on interdisciplinary science, including how it is currently funded and organized at NCAR, and how junior scientists that practice such science are evaluated for promotion. The discussion came around several times to the recent NCAR reorganization into five laboratories and three institutes; note that the familiar divisions still exist within this new matrix organization. In particular, the issue was raised several times that the word "atmosphere" does not exist in the titles of any of the labs or institutes, although Earth, Sun, Math, society, and computers are well represented. The argument from the leadership was that the names were chosen to be "inclusive" rather than "exclusive"; the counterargument is that they're vague, confusing and may be an indicator of the aforementioned mission creep. The Earth Observing Laboratory is to be headed by Roger Wakimoto (UCLA currently) and, as summarized by interim director Rit Carbone, the science challenges for the division include: understanding weather & weather prediction, climate monitoring, water cycle, chemistry and dynamics of the atmosphere, and air quality. New candidate technologies include optical sensing, adaptive surface arrays, advanced sounding systems, and high-resolution radar systems (3 m with 3km range). The Scientific Computing Division plans a 25-fold increase in computing capacity over the next 5 years. They expect delivery on an IBM Blue Gene/L in 2005Q1 as a first step. NCAR does not expect to house it's computing infrastructure much longer, and is looking to move the machines off site in the long term. In other news, ERA-40 data is available on-line at NCAR, and Unidata is working on a future version of the netcdf format that will also be able to read most common data formats, including GRIB and HDF5. The IDV (integrated data viewer) has, among other abilities, the capacity for remote data query and analysis. The budget update can be summarized as Whitehouse and House of Representatives budget cuts and Senate budget increases; after resolution in conference it is likely that the major science agencies will see approximately flat budgets. For NASA, moon-mars is the "A-Plan" for now. FY06 has projected "staggering" deficits and they expect nothing to happen until after the election. If you are interested in these matters, you may wish to consult the UCAR Office of Government Affairs new web site (http://www.ucar.edu/oga/), which has a wealth of information. That's the summary for this year, and I welcome any feedback you may have, particularly with regard to your view of the NCAR-university partnership. I was more outspoken than usual this year, and I can tell you that the management is very receptive to comments from university scientists. You can take advantage of that openness next week, when NCAR director Tim Killeen visits UW.