To: Atmospheric Sciences faculty, students, and staff.
   From: Greg Hakim.
Subject: 2005 UCAR Members Meeting.

On 4--5 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 have done in previous reports, 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 was entitled "Open House Poster Session,"
and consisted of posters from organizations within UCAR. Basically,
representatives were present to discuss the great things that
UCAR/NCAR are up to; I didn't get much from this activity.  One item
of interest for faculty, especially junior faculty, is the NCAR
Faculty Fellowship Program, which funds extended faculty visits to
NCAR, and NCAR scientist visits to universities. Interestingly,
funding is available for faculty to take students and postdocs with
them to NCAR. I have fliers for the program if anybody is interested.

Reports were given by Rick Anthes (UCAR President), Tim Killeen (NCAR
Director) and Cliff Jacobs (NSF). Anthes talk touched on many broad
topics, including the importance of weather forecasts and
predictability to society. His annual report can be viewed at
http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct05/ucar_report.pdf.
Results from a recent UCAR community survey are available at
www.ucar.edu/2005_comm_survey/index.html

Killeen showed examples of recent successes from community models,
including WRF predictions for hurricane Katrina. The HIAPER aircraft
was delivered in March 2005, and is going through testing now before
becoming available to the community in early 2006. The new atmospheric
chemistry building is nearing completion on the Foothills Lab
compound.  On computing, Killeen notes that a new IBM 78-node cluster
has been installed ("blue vista"), bringing peak computing at NCAR to
~15 TFlops.  The Mesa Lab has nearly reached the maximum available
power supply, and future computing expansion will need to be housed
off-site. Finally, NCAR is writing it's new strategic plan, which will
be an update on the previous plan, "NCAR as an Integrator" (I didn't
write down the new working title, but it's something like "NCAR as an
Integrator, Simulator, and Terminator"). Killeen's annual report can
be viewed at www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct05/ncar_report.pdf.

Jacobs discussed cyberinfrastructure in the geosciences community. He
defined components of cyberinfrastructure as high performance
computing, data tools and services, and collaborative and
communication tools (e.g. teragrid). A "vision document" is available
for community review at www.nsf.gov/od/oci/CI-v40.pdf.  In a recent
report, the National Science Board, which provides guidance for NSF,
advised re-examining the "scientific mix" in the ATM division.  As of
2004, the budget breakdown for NSF/ATM was: core grants: 38%, NCAR
science: 17%, NCAR facilities: 18%, other observational facilities:
14%, and NSF priorities: 13%; in total, NCAR funding amounts to 550
million dollars. Some possible changes in the future include allotting
~5% of the budget to high-risk/high-payout research, and to consider 
funding observing facilities for field programs that last several
years.

Finally, the situation in Washington, DC was reviewed by a
representative from a firm that UCAR employs for political monitoring
and lobbying.  For NSF, there are threats to cut funding for education
in the budget, and if history is any guide, these cuts will be filled,
perhaps from the research budget.  There is a controversial item
concerning ice-breaking in the antarctic. The Coast Guard is
increasing their rates for this service from $10-12M to $50M per year.
NSF believes it can contract privately for the service for about $15M,
but doesn't yet have the authority to do so.  The success rate for new
proposals agency wide is about 20%. In order to increase this rate,
there is a move to limit the number of proposals from individual
institutions. This would effectively shift the initial reviewing
burden to institutions, which is bad news for many reasons, but
presumably would reduce the number of proposals at NSF and thereby
increase the success rate.

For NOAA, the House and Senate bills are $1B apart (NOAA's budget is
about $4-5B). In the past such drastic cuts have been restored, but
like a piece of metal bent one too many times, there are fears that
things may break this time. The NOAA organic act, which would
substantially change the agency, is stalled.  NASA is Moon/Mars and
everything else.  According to this briefing, the operative phrases
are, "expect shoes to keep dropping," and "deferred programs = good
bye." DOE science is a bright spot, with funding up about 1%.  A
high-end computing bill, with multi-agency support, is stalled.

Next in the line of good news concerns the impact of Katrina and Rita.
Supplemental appropriations will top $60B, deficit will soar, and
funding will get tighter. Here are the priorities for OMB for FY2007
and beyond: homeland security, high-end computing, nanotech, physical
sciences, complex bio systems, energy & environment. There is however,
an emerging innovation issue, with increasing interest in bolstering
the nations strength in science & technology (Rep. Frank Wolf, chair
of the House Science Appropriations Committee, sent a letter to the
President proposing to triple the Fed R&D budget).

That's all for this year. As always, I welcome your comments, and
issues that you would like me to address in the future.