To: Atmospheric Sciences faculty, students, and staff.
   From: Greg Hakim.
Subject: 2006 UCAR Members Meeting.

On 10--11 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 main topic this year was preparation for the first-ever competition
to manage NCAR, which will take place in 2007. It is important to note
that this will have little to no effect on NCAR, as will be explained
more fully below.  NSF is advertising an open competition, which means
it is possible that an organization other than UCAR could win the right
to manage NCAR. If that were to happen, UCAR would retain the rights to
the extensive collection of programs that it has created at NCAR over
the years (e.g. Unidata, COMET, COSMIC, JOSS, etc.), and could move them
elsewhere. I view this is a substantial "poison pill" toward awarding 
the contract to a non-UCAR organization.

The meeting began with a series of reports, the first of which was from
the UCAR treasurer. Of NCAR's 2006 total annual budget of $293M, $156M
comes from NSF, $101M from non-NSF government funds ($37M NOAA, $30M
NASA, $18M DOD, $14M FAA), and $35M from other sources. The total
budget is roughly unchanged from 2005.

Kelvin Droegemeier, Chair of the UCAR Board of Trustees, gave a summary
of the Board's activities. There is a new "endowed senior scientist
position" in RAL, which they anticipate will be held by an individual
scientist for up to a few years before rotating to somebody else. In
preparation for the competition to manage NCAR next year, the Board has
drafted a strategic plan for UCAR ("UCAR2020"). The plan is written at
a "very high level," which appears to be code language for "vague and
unsubstantial." Although never explicitly stated, I believe that the
intended audience is administrators and non scientists. The plan was
sent this summer to presidents of all UCAR member institutions with a
request for feedback. I was asked by representatives of President
Emmert's office to provide comments on the document, which I did,
although the UW did not appear on the list of 21 institutions that sent
comments. Please send me email if you would like a copy of my comments.
The board plans to use the strategic plan in preparing the UCAR
proposal to manage NCAR, which will not be made public. Kelvin
encouraged community members to provide feedback to the Board. When I
asked how we were supposed to provide feedback on a proposal we were not
permitted to view, he indicated that portions could be discretely
distributed to interest parties.

The National Science Board, which advises NSF, has issued a report
calling for a National Hurricane Response Initiative (NHRI) to better
understand and predict tropical storms. A highly integrated framework
will address all aspects of tropical cyclones and their landfall
impacts (atmosphere, ocean, civil engineering, ecosystem response,
etc.)  except for operational activities, public response, and public
health. Although there are many priorities, the highest is predicting
the intensity and size of landfalling storms. There will be a national
hurricane research testbed with coupled models, and a goal to transfer
advances to operational implementation. Of the proposed $300M in new
annual funding, which is to come from a broad suite of federal
agencies, $200M will be devoted to research activities, and $63M for
the testbed. Three public workshops have been held to gather community
feedback, and public comments may be made until 30 October on the NSB
website (www.nsf.gov/nsb). A separate hurricane initiative, "HiFi"
(Hurricane Intensity Forecasts and Impacts), is also being promoted to
improve hurricane intensity forecasts, with an annual budget of $10M
for 10 years.  Unlike NHRI, proposed funding for HiFi will come from
lease revenue for offshore oil platforms, with no congressional line
items or earmarks on federal agencies.

Cliff Jacobs from NSF indicated that an outside panel of high-level
managers came to NCAR for a site review of NCAR management. The panel
had a positive review of management, liked the NCAR strategic plan, and
recommended the adoption of metrics for performance evaluation. They
also noted the need for a petascale computing facility for community
use, and suggested that NCAR management should have more control
relative to UCAR. The competition to manage NCAR for the period
2009-2013 will start with an RFP later this month, followed by 'concept
and design' papers Jan 2007. Full proposals will be invited for
finalists around May 2007 with a due date in Aug 2007. A decision is
expected by May 2008. All proposals must serve the scientific core of
the NCAR strategic plan to promote undisrupted continuity of NCAR
research and service act ivies.

NCAR director Tim Killeen gave a report on NCAR's activities during the
past year. The 2001 NCAR strategic plan was updated in 2006 from "NCAR
as an Integrator" to "NCAR as an Integrator, Innovator and Community
Builder." The new graduate visitor program was fully subscribed in the
first year. This program provides funds for graduate students and
their advisors to visit for 3-12 months. An undergraduate leadership
workshop is planned for 19-23 June 2007. Five scientists were promoted
to senior scientist this year. Computing facilities increased from 1 to
5 TFlops of sustained throughput, and NCAR connected to the 10 GBit
terragrid network. A proposal was discussed for a "geocollaboratory"
with a goal of distributed petaflop computing. HIAPER began service to
the community this year in two field programs, and the NCAR driftsonde
was successfully tested over Africa and the subtropical North Atlantic
in August.

Rick Anthes, President of UCAR, gave a talk on imperatives in the
atmospheric sciences, motivated by dramatic examples of global
change. He summarized evidence of glaciers retreating, sea level rise,
70 m thinning Greenland's ice in last 5 years, and clear warming of
surface temps over the globe in past 5 years. He argued that we lack
leadership to confront these challenges, and that academia should play
an increasing role in this area.

Joel Witter reviewed federal R&D budgets & policy issues. Federal
budgets are stressed by well known challenges, particularly for
non-defense discretionary items. Nevertheless, there is gathering
momentum for the American Competitive Initiative, which proposes to
double the budgets of "physical sciences" agencies over the next 10
years. The effected agencies include NSF, the science portion of DOE,
and NIST; it does not include NOAA or NASA. NSF's budget reflects an
8% increase and, as usual, NOAA's budget has big cuts in the House and
increases in the Senate that will be worked out in conference. NOAA's
'organic act' is not likely to clear the senate this year, although the
feeling is that just getting to the floor of House was good publicity
for NOAA. Legislation was introduced for the National Science Board
hurricane initiative described above. The weather coalition has a new
website (www.weathercoalition.org), and the UCAR office of government
affairs has frequent budget updates on it's web page
(www.ucar.edu/oga).

Member representatives at the meeting this year participated in eight
break-out groups, one for each topic in the UCAR strategic plan. We
were charged with discussing the topics in the plan, and to make
recommendations. I participated in the "science" session, where I
argued that science should have greater representation in the plan, and
there should be goals that are specific enough to be verified. During
the plenary discussion of the results of the breakout groups, there
were several suggestions that the plan is too vague in many aspects 
and lacks visionary goals.

That's all for this year. You may find several of the presentations at
http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct06/members.html along with
other information about the meeting. As always, I welcome your
comments, and issues that you would like me to address in the future.