To: Atmospheric Sciences faculty, students, and staff
   From: Greg Hakim
Subject: 2013 UCAR Members Meeting

On 8-9 October I attended the UCAR Annual Members Meeting as a representative of the University of Washington. In accordance with my responsibilities as a Members Representative, I am sending this 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 of you 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 Treasurer's report (given by Scott Sternberg) indicated that NCAR received $118.1M of base funding from NSF as compared to $111M 2012. This increase is an artifact of the time period considered, which was August-August this year; in reality NCAR took a 2.6% budget cut in FY2013. Since community assets such as the observing and computing facilities were protected from cuts, the impact on science divisions was much larger. Including grants, total NSF support is $198.2M, or 55% of the $359.4M budget. This total compares with $390.6M in FY2012. Some of the difference is due to the fact that construction of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center is now completed. The total budget includes $105M of non-NSF government funding, and $55.8M of non-government funding.

UCAR director Tom Bogdan's presentation indicated that the UCAR contract to manage NCAR has been extended through September 2018, at which point there will be a full recompetition of the management contract. Tom also highlighted a new web portal for webinars and other presentations available here: president.ucar.edu/university-relations/uforum 

UCAR Community of Programs (UCP) Director Emily Cobabe-Ammann discussed the finances and direction of UCP. The projected budget for FY2014 indicates a total budget of $42M, which is an increase over last year; COMET in particular is up $500K year-over-year after a period of difficult finances. Of the total UCP budget, the largest contributors are: JOSS accounts for 31%, Unidate 10%, the Visiting Scientist Program (VSP) 23%, COMET 10%, COSMIC 11%, and GLOBE 8%. A new program, UConnect, aims to deliver weather and climate resources to the general public.  Emily indicated that UCP is happy to work with community members on large proposals to construct broader impact statements for NSF proposals.  This is part of a larger effort where UCP aims to support university research activity and connect it to stakeholders and the general public.  To stabilize UCP's funding, there are plans to offer UCP services for large-scale projects that may leverage UCP assets. One benefit of this approach is that this may provide facilitation and operational support beyond what universities normally offer.

NCAR director Jim Hurrell gave his first presentation to the membership after taking the helm last summer. He started with an overview of his professional career arc and moved on to details of NCAR activities and science highlights. There is a new digital guide to observing facilities, located at www.eol.ucar.edu/laof. Moreover, another site, climatedataguide.ucar.edu, provides an expert-based review of 147 climate datasets. For community models, there are 21,500 registered WRF model users, and 3,000 CESM data users. Science highlights include a GRL paper on the time time history of ocean heat content through depth (1958-present), which shows that much of the heat uptake is in the deeper ocean (Trenbeth and Kallen 2013). Another study showed a successful simulation by CAM of the QBO by using high vertical resolution and a parameterized gravity wave scheme. Finally, a study of "cannibal" coronal mass ejections shows that preconditioning of the solar magnetic field lines allows these faster storms to reach Earth in 6-12 h compared to 36-48 h (typical of CMEs).

The last part of the day was devoted to a presentation of the President's Advisory Committee for University Relations (PACUR) by yours truly, and a discussion of six proposed bylaw changes by the Governance Task Group (on which I sit), which is an ad hoc committee formed by the Board of Trustees. Without going into the details of all six items, suffice it to say that some were minor revisions to clean up the bylaws, and some were very significant. In the eleven years that I have served as your Member Representative, this was by far the most intense and thoughtful discussion at this meeting. In the end only one measure passed with the needed 2/3 majority, and it was the most significant: the Affiliate Members were made full voting members of UCAR.

On Wednesday we were given an update on the situation in Washington DC, from a revised and augmented UCAR lobbying team. UCAR now has a Washington DC office co-located and working collaboratively with Ocean Leadership; they invite members visiting the Capital to visit and inform them ahead of time. Lobbying was focused on three main areas: defense of NSF/GEO funding; NSF core research funding; and the Weather Improvement Act. The FY2014 budget features increases in the President's proposal for science funding (e.g. NSF +8.4%; NASA +2.6%); cuts from the House, and a Senate budget closer to the President's. When pressed to demonstrate some measure of performance for past lobbying activity, the group gave little of substance and a few anecdotes on how they influenced legislation this year.

There were two sets of breakout sessions. The first was devoted to member feedback on the draft NCAR strategic plan, and the second session involved a number of climate-related topics, including a session that I attended on forking CESM to have a "university branch" that would be easier for faculty and students to modify for experimentation and idealized simulations.

That's all for this year. You may find several of the meeting presentations at president.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct13 along with additional information about the meeting; other presentations and summary information will appear in a few days on a follow-up web page that will be linked from this page. This was my last meeting as your UCAR member representative, and I will be handing off this responsibility during the coming year.