Editor: Jim Elliott
Contributor: Stephanie Kenitzer
Copy Editor: Marcie Weber
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Families devastated by the events of 11 September will face one less hardship in years to come, thanks in part to the generosity of the science and engineering community. Technical and scientific societies representing more than a million members have joined together in sponsoring the Science and Engineering Scholarship Fund. Financially needy dependents of both domestic and foreign victims of the terrorist attack can rely on the fund to help them pursue science and engineering degrees at U.S. colleges and universities. The endowment is part of the broader Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund, which is benefiting from a campaign led by Bill Clinton and Bob Dole to raise $100 million through fund-raising events and gifts from corporations, foundations, and individuals.
To make a donation or learn about the fund visit http://www.aps.org/sciencefund.html, or for more information, contact Sarah Davis at the American Physical Society: (301) 209-3223, davis@aps.org.
Fund sponsors are Acoustical Society of America, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Association of Engineering Societies, American Astronomical Society, American Chemical Society, American Crystallographic Association, American Geological Institute, American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, American Institute of Physics, American Mathematical Society, American Meteorological Society, American Physical Society, American Psychological Society, American Society for Cell Biology, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society for Information Science and Technology, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, American Society of Parasitologists, American Society of Plant Biologists, Association for Women in Science, Computing Research Association, Council of Scientific Society Presidents, Ecological Society of America, Estuarine Research Federation, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, The Institute of Navigation, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.—USA, The International Society for Optical Engineers, Materials Research Society, Optical Society of America, Research!America, The Science Coalition, Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, and Society of Toxicology.
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At this writing, the entire federal budget has still not been completely passed Congress and become law. Five of the 13 appropriations bills either remained to be cleared by one or both Houses of Congress, or await the President’s signature, even following five continuing resolutions to extend federal spending authority beyond the 1 October start of the new, FY02, fiscal year. The four bills of greatest interest to the atmospheric sciences community, however, have now passed and become law.
Following is an overview of FY02 funding, down to the agency and/or overall program level (all numbers are rounded off).
Within NOAA (all are in “ORF” accounts, i.e., Operations, Research and Facilities), the National Weather Service is funded for FY02 at $672 million, an increase over the President’s request by $13 million and $40 million over FY01 enacted. The Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research has received funding for FY02 of $356 million, an increase over the President’s request by $34.9 million and $52 million over the FY01 enacted level. The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service has received $140 million for FY02, an increase over the President’s request by $8 million and $15 million over FY01 enacted.
The National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) budget was increased substantially, this time with the surprising help of the appropriations subcommittee on the House side. NSF received funding in FY02 of $4.8 billion, an increase over the President’s request of $381 million and $437 million over the FY01 enacted level. This is an overall increase of approximately 8.5%.
NASA’s Earth Sciences Enterprises (ESE) program received funding for FY02 of $1.573 million, an increase over the President’s request by $58 million and $89 million over the FY01 enacted level. It should be noted that because of a different mix among programs, it is difficult to offer a precise comparison between FY01 and FY02 funding levels.
The Department of Energy’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program received funding for FY02 of $527 million, an increase over the President’s request by $84 million and $44 million over the FY01 enacted level.
The U.S. Geological Survey received funding for FY02 of $206 million, an increase over the President’s request by $46 million and $4 million over the FY01 enacted level. The streamgaging network (federal funding is only a relatively small part of funding for this program, with state and local jurisdictions providing the largest portion) received $14.3 million for FY02, an increase of $200,000 over FY01 enacted.
Next month, AMS News will provide a more detailed breakdown of some of these elements of the federal budget affecting the atmospheric and related sciences, including some specific programs of special note.
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As Tropical Storm Olga churns in the Atlantic, the official 2001 Atlantic Hurricane Season drew to a close last week, capping off another year with increased hurricane activity. The season, which ended 30 November, brought 15 named storms, including 9 hurricanes—4 classified as major. Although none of the hurricanes made landfall, forecasters from the National Weather Service said the 2001 season reawakened the nation to the deadly, catastrophic realities of tropical storms.
“Many people think it’s just hurricanes that carry the danger and destruction, but Tropical Storm Allison put that myth to rest,” said retired general Jack Kelly, NOAA’s National Weather Service director. Allison went into the weather history books as the costliest tropical storm ever to strike the United States. The storm left 24 dead and more than $5 billion in damages throughout Texas and Louisiana before heading to the East Coast. Two other tropical storms—Barry and Gabrielle—hit the United States with just-below-hurricane strength.
“Tropical storms are as serious as hurricanes because of their potential to wreak havoc with heavy rains that cause major floods,” said Max Mayfield, National Hurricane Center director. “It’s important for residents not to just focus solely on a storm’s wind speeds. The rains can kill, too.”
Although above average in the number of named storms, the 2001 season was the second consecutive year without a land-falling hurricane in the United States. Since Hurricane Irene in 1999, there have been 18 hurricanes that formed but did not strike the United States—a new record.
Several of this year’s storms stayed well to the south, moving westward through the Caribbean, following the easterly steering winds. Other potential hurricanes coming out of the deep Tropics were weakened by unfavorable upper-level winds.
As a highlight to the 2001 season, Mayfield credited the National Weather Service’s improved forecast model guidance as pivotal in the accurate forecasting of Hurricane Michelle.
“It took a Herculean effort by the U.S. Air Force (Reserves) and NOAA aircraft to gather extra reconnaissance data crunched in the numerical prediction models at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center,” Mayfield said.
“The aircraft data and supplemental weather balloon launches by National Weather Service Southern Region forecast offices fed critical data to the models. The consistency of the model output for the storm’s track allowed our team to make a very good forecast for Michelle to turn northeastward perilously near, but off-shore of, the south Florida coast.”
Detailed summaries of the 2001 storms are found on the NOAA National Hurricane Center Web site, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov, under “Current Season Summaries and Reports.”
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During meetings in Morocco early in November, 160 nations, including Great Britain, Japan, and Russia, agreed to a climate control treaty that sets mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse gases. The United States was not a signatory, President Bush having rejected the pact last March, saying it would be too harsh on U.S. industries and utilities that use large amounts of coal.
The treaty would require 40 industrialized nations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and other heat-trapping gases by an average of 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012.
The Moroccan agreement spells out rules for compliance, sets binding penalties for countries that fail to meet their targets, and creates a tracking program that will allow major industrial polluters to buy “credits” from countries with low pollution levels or that invest heavily in antipollution technology.
In reaching agreement, European Union leaders were forced to make concessions to Russia and Japan that added flexibility to the rules. Japan insisted that negotiators wait until after the treaty is ratified next year before determining whether the emission “targets” are legally binding, as it prefers. Russia extracted a concession doubling the amount it could claim for its carbon-absorbing forests and agricultural land from 17.6 million tons to 33 million tons.
Many of the negotiators and environmental leaders concede that without the participation of the United States—which is responsible for a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions—the treaty will have only modest impact in the foreseeable future.
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NASA Researchers using satellites and weather stations around the world have found air temperature near the earth’s surface has warmed by 1°F (0.6°C) globally over the last century.
Dr. James Hansen, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Science, New York, and Marc Imhoff, of Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, and other researchers analyzed records for 7200 global weather stations and used satellite observations of nighttime lights around the planet to identify stations with minimal local human influence. Their findings appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research—Atmospheres.
“Warming around the world has been widespread, but it is not present everywhere,” Hansen said. Warming in the past 50 years has been rapid in Alaska and Siberia, but Greenland has become cooler.
Hansen and Imhoff are making a special effort to minimize any distortion of the record caused by urban-heat island effects as they research global warming. Recognizing that many weather stations are warmer because of human development near the station, they used nighttime satellite images to identify stations where urbanization was most likely to contaminate the weather records.
U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellites measure the brightness of nighttime lights all over the world. Hansen and Imhoff used the nighttime brightness to classify the location of each weather station as urban, near-urban, or rural. They found greater warming at urban stations, “so we use the rural stations to adjust the urban records, thus obtaining a better measure of the true climate change.”
Evidence of a slight local human influence is found even in small towns, and is probably impossible to totally eliminate in the global analyses, they wrote. Although Hansen and Imhoff have not yet applied satellite data in most of the world, they adjusted the long-term trend of urban stations to be consistent with the nearest rural stations. They estimate that remaining urban influence on the global record is not more than about 0.18°F (0.1°C)
The group classified its findings into three segments between 1900 and 2000. From 1900 to 1940, data showed that the world warmed, probably in response to released greenhouse gases and in part to natural climate variability, they reported.
Between 1940 and 1965, the globe cooled by about 0.18°F (0.1°C), which some scientists attribute to increased aerosols. Aerosol forcing can lead to more cloud cover and block incoming radiation.
The third period, from 1965 to 2000, showed a widespread warming around the world, they noted. During this time, warming intensified in the El Niño region of the eastern Pacific and the Indian, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans.
More information is available at http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011027heatisland.html.
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Politics, more than climate, influences the federal costs of flood disasters, according to a new study. States are far more likely to receive federal funds through a presidential disaster declaration in years when the president is running for reelection, say researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Cooperative Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The team identified a 46% increase in disaster declarations during presidential reelection years, independent of the amount of precipitation or flood damage and whether the president is Republican or Democrat.
NCAR associate scientist Mary Downton and University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke Jr. report their findings in the November issue of the journal Natural Hazards Review.
“The declaration rates depend on the individual president—there’s no general distinction along party lines,” says Downton. Ronald Reagan stands out dramatically, she notes, with the fewest disaster declarations, once the damage and precipitation effects are factored out. There was more damage from flooding during the Clinton administration than during the first Bush administration, and the number of disaster declarations under Clinton was higher. After removing damage and precipitation effects, the researchers found that Clinton’s declaration numbers were about the same as Bush’s.
“We certainly see climate and damage varying from year to year,” notes Pielke. “But if a goal of national policy is to reduce the federal costs of flooding disasters, then an effective way to do that is to focus on the politics and policies of disaster declarations.”
The team notes that congressional and administrative guidelines for presidential declarations have not changed substantially since the authorizing legislation in 1950; their language allows presidents considerable discretion to respond in the wake of a disaster.
“Given the lack of explicit guidelines, you have to expect that individual discretion is going to enter into presidential declarations, and that’s what our data show,” says Downton.
“Our findings are cause for optimism,” says Pielke, “since policy is subject to human control. We do have some choices.” He adds that understanding the relationship of politics and climate in disaster declarations is a policy area that has not received much scrutiny to date.
The authors reanalyzed flood damage data collected by the National Weather Service. They evaluated consistency among the data and adjusted damage estimates for the years 1965–97 to 1995 dollars.
The historical record of precipitation was a second factor in their analysis. The researchers also considered a state’s ability to deal with flood damage. They then compared the damage and precipitation data with the number of flood-related declarations approved by each presidential administration from Johnson through Clinton, based on data provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
A graph illustrating the difference in number of presidential disaster declarations in election and nonelection years is available at ftp://ftp.ucar.edu/communications/declarations.jpg.
Data on U.S. flood damage costs, 1955–99, are available at the Extreme Weather Sourcebook: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/sourcebook/floods.html.
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NOAA has begun issuing 5-day flood outlooks. The product, tested over the past few months by NOAA’s River Forecast Centers, became operational on 1 November 2001.
The flood outlook was developed by each of the 13 regional River Forecast Centers throughout the United States and is available to the public with a graphical display on the internet. An additional map showing flood potential for the contiguous 48 states will be available through the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network, NOAA Port, the Family of Services, and NOAA Web sites.
Details are available on the Internet at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hic/Flood_Outlook/index.html or http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/nationalfloodoutlook/.
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The National Weather Service (NWS) implemented a new method to compute windchill temperature to provide better winter weather warnings throughout the nation beginning 1 November 2001. The index will include specific windchill threshold values showing frostbite danger at given periods of time.
The new windchill formula is the product of a yearlong effort by scientists and windchill experts from the academic community, and the U.S. and Canadian governments. This working group is called the Joint Action Group for Temperature Indices (JAG/TI) and is chaired by the NWS. The goal of JAG/TI is to internationally upgrade and standardize the index for temperature extremes (e.g., windchill index).
In October 2000, scientists began evaluating the previous windchill formula and developed plans for a standardized index among the meteorological community for North America. This new windchill formula was developed after extensive analysis of the factors that impact wind chill, using the latest advances in science, technology and computer modeling to provide a more accurate, understandable and useful model for calculating the dangers from winter winds and freezing temperatures. The resulting formula was then tested using human volunteers at the wind tunnel and climatic chamber of the Defense and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine in Toronto, Canada.
Specifically, the new windchill index will
The previous index has been used by the National Weather Service since 1973, and was based on science produced by Antarctic explorers in 1945.
The new windchill index is available online at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/windchill.
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The navy christened an oceanographic research vessel, the Kilo Moana (AGOR26) on 17 November at Atlantic Marine, Inc., Jacksonville, Florida.
Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye was the ceremony’s principal speaker, and his wife, Margaret Inouye, was the ship sponsor. In time-honored Navy tradition, she broke a bottle of champagne across the bow and formally named the vessel, Kilo Moana, which means “Oceanographer” in Hawaiian.
Kilo Moana is designed to perform a wide spectrum of oceanographic research in coastal and deep ocean areas. Research ranges from physical, biological and chemical oceanography , marine acoustics, marine geology to geophysics.
As part of the nation’s University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System, the ship will be capable of sampling and collecting air, surface, midwater, and seafloor parameters; full ocean depth seafloor surveys; launching, towing, and recovery of science packages; handling and servicing tethered remotely operated vehicles and autonomous underwater vehicles; deployment and recovery of deep-sea moorings; and shipboard data processing and analyses.
The ship has an innovative hull known as a Small-Waterplane-Area Twin Hull (SWATH). Compared to a monohull, a SWATH exposes only a minimum of the ship to lifting forces of waves. The SWATH is based on the principle of semisubmersible offshore rigs that are designed to provide a working platform with diminished motions in open seas, significantly reducing the ship’s pitch and roll.
The ship will be delivered to the navy in 2002.
The Kilo Moana is 185 feet in length and 88 feet wide. It has a lab space of 2762 square feet, a working deck surface of 4460 square feet, a displacement of 2542 light tons, and a full load draft of 25 feet.
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The earth’s land-based ecosystems absorbed all of the carbon released by deforestation plus another 1.4 billion tons emitted by fossil fuel burning during the 1990s, but we can’t rely on this convenient uptake to head off global warming in the future, according to a new study published the 7 November issue of the journal Nature. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas entering the atmosphere from human activities.
“We could easily see this robust transfer of carbon out of the atmosphere and into land-based ecosystems that occurred in the 1990s slow down in the future,” says the paper’s lead author, David Schimel, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
Fossil-fuel burning, cement manufacture, and deforestation gave off about 7 billion tons of carbon per year during the 1980s and 8 billion tons annually during the 1990s, about half of it ending up in the earth’s atmosphere, according to the study. In the 1980s the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere from deforestation about equaled that taken up by land ecosystems into various “sinks.” During the 1990s the balance tipped, and 1.4 billion tons more carbon ended up in the land-based biosphere than in the atmosphere, despite continuing deforestation.
Land-use changes in the Northern Hemisphere have been partly responsible for carbon uptake during the 1990s. In the United States, trees and other growth expanded on abandoned agricultural land, while a reduction in fires allowed forests to spread. Enhanced plant growth spurred by increasing carbon dioxide and nitrogen deposits—a process more noticeable in Europe and Asia—also helped clear the air of CO2 buildup.
“Forests can only replace farms for so long,” explains Schimel. “Eventually new trees and grasses reach maturity and soak up less carbon dioxide. Similarly, there’s a limit to how much forests can fill in and spread, even with successful fire suppression.” The boost in CO2 and nitrogen fertilization will peak as well, though at high levels. Over time the effects of climate change on ecosystems will probably reduce sinks globally, write the authors. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide emissions are expected to continue to rise because of human activities.
An unusually large uptake of atmospheric carbon in the early 1990s was due to the climate’s natural variability, researchers suspect. Globally there appears to be a net release of carbon into the atmosphere during warm, dry years and a net uptake during cooler years. Recently, evidence has grown linking changing levels of atmospheric CO2 to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and its widespread impacts.
For the Tropics, scientists expected computer models to show a large increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide released by deforestation during recent decades. In fact, no such increase emerged, indicating a potentially large sink in the low latitudes. Local-scale studies show carbon absorption by a range of mature tropical forest types, but the authors warn that such processes may not be true of the entire region, since tropical ecosystems vary widely. The lack of data, both atmospheric and ecological, combined with a complex meteorology, make estimates of tropical fluxes highly uncertain, they caution.
Previous attempts to evaluate carbon uptake in North America compared to that occurring in Europe and Asia have been controversial. In this paper, the authors conclude that the 1990s sink was roughly split between Eurasia and North America, with Eurasia slightly leading.
Because they used only atmospheric data in their analyses, the authors caution that the resulting distribution pattern is highly uncertain. Even so, it appears consistent with independent analyses of satellite vegetation data. The uptake patterns across the continents also make sense physically: they appear to be driven by broad climate patterns interacting with historic human management of ecosystems.
Carbon accumulates at higher rates in intensively managed ecosystems and those recovering from disturbance, the researchers note. For example, Chinese inventory studies of continental plant growth show a major carbon sink resulting from extensive programs in foresting and reforesting.
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A new study reports that shifting wind patterns in the stratosphere may help forecasters predict weather on earth 2 months ahead of time because they have an effect on where storms track in the Northern Hemisphere.
Changes in the stratosphere, that atmospheric layer 6 to 30 miles up, usually take a week or more to work their way down to where they affect weather and tend to last 2 months, according to the study, financed in part by NASA. The article appeared in the 19 October issue of Science.
According to the study, the stratosphere plays an important part in how large-scale waves, which originate near the earth’s surface, feed back to affect weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere.
In the winter, these waves tend to slow the winds in the stratosphere. This process starts with the higher stratospheric winds and over about a week’s time can work its way down to winds in the lower stratosphere, just above the flight levels of commercial air traffic.
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Atmospheric scientists around the country will soon have access to powerful new computational, storage, and communications technologies provided by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and its parent organization, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). NCAR and UCAR announced recently the purchase of a new IBM SP supercomputer, to be followed by latest-generation technologies, code-named Blue Sky, in a three-phase acquisition.
The new system is expected to accelerate research in global and regional climate change, droughts, short- and long-range weather prediction and warnings, wildland fires, turbulence, atmospheric chemistry, space weather, and other critical areas. The National Science Foundation, NCAR’s primary sponsor, purchased the machine for use at NCAR to advance a wide range of research topics in the agency’s 10-year plan for the geosciences.
The acquisition begins this fall with the delivery of a suite of equipment that more than doubles the computational capacity of NCAR’s current IBM SP to a peak of two trillion calculations per second. It will increase the lab’s current disk storage capacity fivefold, up to 10.5 trillion bytes, or characters, of data.
A second delivery, in September 2002, will introduce IBM’s next-generation processors, nodes, and other hardware, bringing the peak speed up to seven trillion calculations per second. The package will also include 21 terabytes of new disk storage. In the fall of 2003, NCAR will receive IBM’s next round of switch technology, whose lower latency and higher bandwidth will significantly increase signal speed.
The increase in NCAR’s computing capacity will directly benefit climate change research. For example, NCAR’s premier computer model of the earth’s climate simulates a century of climate in 29 days of computing time. NCAR’s current IBM SP system, code-named Blackforest, is capable of running 6 such simulations simultaneously in that time. The equipment installed this year ups the number to 14 simulations in a month. A year from now, when the second phase of new equipment kicks in, the combined power of all IBM SP systems will allow nearly 50 one-century climate simulations per month.
The earth’s weather and climate result from a complex interplay of physical, chemical, and biological processes of the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and sea ice. Understanding and predicting the earth’s climate system, particularly climate variation and possible human-induced climate change, presents one of the most difficult challenges in science. As computer models of the global climate system become increasingly sophisticated, supercomputers must continually stretch their limits to meet the needs of the scientific community.
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A new forecast product for commercial and private pilots is now available through the National Weather Service and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Produced by the National Weather Service’s Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City, Missouri, the new forecast product provides pilots with a plotted map depicting the current location of convective hazards and where they will be in the next hour.
Called the National Convective Weather Forecast (NCWF), it combines NOAA’s weather service radar mosaics and cloud-to-ground lightning data into 6-color hazardous weather prediction. NCWF will be used to complement onboard radar systems that detect small storms that are less hazardous to aviation.
The product has been run for the past 16 months as an experimental product, according to Jack May, acting director of the Aviation Weather Center. He said the NCWF would be a great help to pilots in planning and executing their flight plans by showing the quickest and easiest ways to avoid turbulent weather.
The product can be viewed on the Internet at http://cdm.awc-kc.noaa.gov/ncwf.
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The Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) has updated its Numeric Data Package, “A Databank of Antarctic Surface Temperature and Pressure Data,” containing monthly mean surface temperature and mean sea level pressure data from 29 meteorological stations within the Antarctic region.
Data sources include World Weather Records, Monthly Climatic Data of the World, and most recently, additional observations obtained directly from Australia, British, and New Zealand weather services.
The beginning year of data records varies greatly with the station, but most stations’ records extend through 1999 (a few 2000) and include all available mean monthly maximum and minimum temperature data. For many stations, this means that more than 40 years of data are now available.
The information is available at CDIAC’s Web site: http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov.
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Recent graduates in the earth and space sciences are finding satisfying employment faster, and at higher pay in most sectors, than in previous years, according to a new report from the American Geophysical Union (AGU), American Geological Institute (AGI), and the American Institute of Physics (AIP).
For the third year in a row, new graduates with doctoral degrees in the geophysical sciences are spending less time looking for work. In 2000, the average time spent was only 3.4 months, compared with 5.5 months in 1998 and 4.7 months in 1999. The overwhelming majority found work within the earth and space sciences and almost all of them in science or engineering jobs.
AGU and AGI have collected data about new Ph.D. graduates for 5 years, from surveys of the graduates themselves. Some additional data came from the National Science Foundation. Only graduates of American universities who have remained in the United States are included in the study.
The continuing upward trend is reflected in recent graduates’ perception of the job market. In 1996, only 4% described it as good or excellent, while 65% described it as hopeless or bad. In 2000, 28% described the job market as good or excellent, and just 22% said it was hopeless or bad. Partly, this reflects the shorter time required to find a job and partly the higher starting salaries now offered.
About half of the new graduates moved directly into permanent full-time positions, while 42% took temporary postdoctoral jobs, usually at universities. The remainder took other temporary jobs. More than half of all respondents are engaged primarily in research.
But, not all graduates found work in the science they had studied, noted Megan Henly of AIP. “In 2000, there was an overproduction of PhDs in ocean sciences,” she observed. “While most reported finding satisfying employment, half of the new ocean scientists found work in other fields.”
Nicholas Claudy of AGI pointed out that new Ph.D.’s in the solid earth sciences tend to be older than their counterparts in other physical sciences. “There is no readily apparent explanation for this,” he said. “The master’s is the degree of choice for nearly all non-research employment, so possibly these scientists worked in industry for some years before returning to universities for doctoral programs.”
Whether they were working in industry, academe, or government, recent graduates had many positive comments, including the intellectual challenge of conducting one’s own research (25% listed it as the most rewarding aspect), the opportunity for continued learning (19%), or teaching and working with students (13%). Comments about their jobs included, “a dream come true,” “doing what I enjoy,” and “I enjoy it 24/7.”
The happy employment experience of the 2000 graduates may reflect their experience in graduate school. Only 1 in 10 reported that they had considered dropping out of the Ph.D. program regularly or constantly, compared with 50% in 1996.
The report, “Earth & Space Science PhDs, Class of 2000,” was written by Jennifer Giesler (AGU), Megan Henly (AIP), and Nicholas Claudy (AGI). It may be read in full on the AGU or AGI Web sites at http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/careers.html (scroll to “Survey of Recent PhD Graduates,” then click on “Class of 2000”) or http://www.agiweb.org/career/phdreport00.pdf .
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The 36th Congress of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society will be held 22–25 May 2002, in Rimouski, Quebec, Canada. The theme of the congress is “The Northern Environment,” with presentations by internationally known keynote speakers and by scientists and students from across Canada and abroad.
The Canadian Society welcomes oral and poster presentations in the fields of meteorology, climatology, oceanography, and hydrology dealing with all aspects of the northern environment such as the dynamic and variability of the cryosphere, the exchanges between the atmosphere and ocean, the carbon cycle, contaminants, and all studies dealing with the limnology, biogeochemistry, and chemistry in arctic and subarctic ecosystems, including fjords, polynyas, marginal sea-ice zones, and the boreal forest. Contributions are also welcomed in all fields of meteorology, climatology, oceanography, and hydrology, such as boundary layers, cloud physics, energy and radiation, measurement methods, marine forecasting or operational meteorology, climate modeling, and climate change and variability including paleoclimatology.
For more information please visit http://scmo-cmos-2002.osl.gc.ca/ or contact Francois Roy, royf@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.
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The International Commission on History of Meteorology (ICHM), established in July 2001 in Mexico City, is recruiting new members. The ICHM is a branch of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS) and is part of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). The aims of the commission are as follows:
The Web site of the ICHM, http://www.colby.edu/ichm, makes available its constitution, an online membership form, a directory of members, a growing bibliography, and current announcements. Membership is free.
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The University of North Dakota (UND) John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences has been awarded an 8-year cooperative agreement through the University of Minnesota, Army High Performance Computer Research Center (AHPCRC) totaling $3.3 million.
The award is part of an Army competitive program to develop advanced high performance computing research in support of the Army’s modernization program. The Odegard School’s atmospheric sciences researchers, lead by the Regional Weather Information Center (RWIC) and the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, teamed with five universities on the successful award that has a total value of $34 million. UND will team with the University of Minnesota, Clark Atlanta University, Florida A&M University, Howard University, and Jackson State University. All six universities have strong traditions of education and public service and are research institutions with scholars of national and international reputation.
The AHPCRC program provides a unique opportunity for the participating universities to strengthen their academic programs in the computational sciences by providing access to state-of-the-art high performance computing resources such as the AHPCRC’s CRAY T3E-1200, IBM RS6000s and other systems. The AHPCRC also provides introductory and advanced summer institutes in high performance computing and technology exchange programs with the US Army. The program also provides a mechanism for AHPCRC researchers and students to closely interact with Army and other defense researchers in critical areas of interdisciplinary computational science.
RWIC is a forecasting and weather analysis center for education, research, climate change, transportation, agriculture, aviation, and TV and radio broadcast weather nowcasting and forecasting. State-of-the-art computer technology is designed to provide a modern approach to weather processing, analysis and dissemination, allowing RWIC to gather, store and analyze data for numerous projects designed to improve everyday life in the Northern Great Plains. The primary goal of this facility is to permit students pursuing degrees in Atmospheric Sciences with an opportunity to participate in both operational and research aspects of contemporary meteorology. The different aspects of RWIC include Advanced Transportation Weather Information System (ATWIS), USDA’s North Dakota Agricultural Statistic Service, Remote Sensing/Geographic Information Systems, and Broadcasting.
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NASA has closed down its Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) in an effort to save $10 million for other earth science projects.
Although 8 of the 10 instruments on board are still operating on the 10-year-old spacecraft, no funds were available to support operations.
Designed to measure ozone and other chemicals as well as stratospheric winds and temperatures, the satellite has played a role in creating a better scientific understanding of the upper atmosphere in climate.
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The U.S. Senate has confirmed retired navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr., Ph.D., as Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere. In this capacity, he will serve as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the nation’s top science agency for oceans and the atmosphere.
NOAA serves the nation by forecasting all U.S. weather and climate, operating environmental satellites, monitoring and archiving ocean and atmospheric data, managing marine fisheries and mammals, and conducting cutting-edge oceanic, atmospheric, and solar research. It maintains an annual budget of more than $3.2 billion and 12 700 employees at posts in every U.S. state, at sea and many overseas locations. The agency manages the U.S. operational weather and environmental satellites, a fleet of research ships and aircraft, and 12 environmental research laboratories, and is home to one of the nation’s 7 uniform services, the NOAA Corps.
A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Lautenbacher has served in a broad range of command, operational, and staff billets. He served as deputy chief of Naval Operations in charge of resource allocation and requirements development for the navy, commander of the U.S. Third Fleet and director of the Office of Program Appraisal. As a director on the Joint Staff, he reported to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as principal strategic planning and resource allocation executive, making key recommendations affecting the size and composition of the U.S. Armed Forces. His background also includes operational tours in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, as well as assignments as systems analyst with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Lautenbacher attended Harvard University, receiving master’s and doctorate degrees in applied mathematics. He was selected as a navy Federal Executive Fellow and served at the Brookings Institution. Most recently he was the president of CORE, the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education. CORE is a Washington, D.C., based association of 66 U.S. oceanographic research institutions, universities, laboratories, and aquariums.
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Donald R. Johnson, a highly regarded climate and numerical model expert, today was named special project scientist for the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service. Beginning 1 December, Johnson will lead research projects aimed at furthering NOAA’s climate prediction and modeling capabilities.
In this position, Johnson will work on the development of advanced weather and climate environmental models that can be used by research and operational forecast communities. Organizations that he will interface with include the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and NASA, among others. Johnson will also mentor NCEP scientists.
Johnson presently serves as vice president for earth sciences at the Universities Space Research Association in Columbia, Maryland. He is also professor emeritus of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, and a past president of the American Meteorological Society. Johnson’s articles have been widely published in professional and scientific journals. He also has served as chief editor of Monthly Weather Review, and of the AMS Meteorological Monographs (1990–98).
For 30 years, Johnson taught a variety of courses. Most notably, he has engaged in extensive research on the secondary and planetary circulation of the atmosphere.
Johnson’s memberships include the AMS, the National Weather Association, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he has sustained a record number of outstanding accomplishments. He has served as a member, chairman of numerous committees in conjunction with scientific activities, and participated frequently in scientific reviews for the National Research Council, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, NSF, NASA, and NOAA.
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Mary M. Glackin, deputy assistant administrator for satellite and information services at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and James Purdom, who recently retired from the NOAA, recently received the 2001 Presidential Rank Award for extraordinary contributions to NOAA’s management and programs. President George W. Bush honored Glackin and Purdom, and other federal executives, at a ceremony on 15 October 2001. Glackin and Purdom will also become AMS Fellows in January 2002.
In her position with NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) Glackin oversees operations of several key areas, including satellite operations, satellite data processing and distribution, systems development, and research and applications. She also oversees three national data centers and the office that is merging civilian and military environmental satellite programs.
Glackin has reorganized the NESDIS headquarters office to make it more responsive to the operating units. She has also taken steps to develop the workforce by conducting innovative training programs and ensuring that a work environment exists where all employees can thrive.
In her 6 years of senior executive service, Glackin has sustained a record of outstanding accomplishments. She successfully developed and deployed a system that provides National Weather Service forecasters with the capability of issuing greatly improved severe weather warnings and forecasts with a reduced workforce. Glackin’s managerial skills saved the government millions of dollars and won the 1999 Smithsonian ComputerWorld Award for Information Technology in the energy, environment, and agriculture category.
In his position with NESDIS, Purdom was director of the Office of Research and Applications, which provides guidance for the development and evolution of spacecraft and sensors to meet future needs. ORA conducts oceanographic, land surface, and atmospheric research on the use of satellite data for monitoring environmental characteristics and their change. The office also develops applications of satellite data and algorithms to produce satellite products, for uses relevant to NOAA’s mission.
Purdom, who is now a senior research scientist at Colorado State University’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, was a recognized leader and team builder within NOAA and has been instrumental in advancing the use of satellite data for both ocean and atmosphere applications. World renowned, he chaired the World Meteorological Organization’s group that is responsible for the redesign of the global observing system and assuring improved utilization of satellite data worldwide. The ORA management structure that he developed has led to a motivated and productive workforce. Under Purdom, employees have been inspired to exceptional levels of accomplishment: providing leadership on national and international working groups; implementing unprecedented science-based product development; gaining international recognition through various awards; and contributing to numerous scientific publications.
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President Bush has nominated Sean O’Keefe to succeed Dan Goldin as NASA administrator.
O’Keefe is deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Goldin resigned as of 17 November after having led the space agency for 10 years, longer than any other administrator O’Keefe faces Senate confirmation before he can take over the $14.5-billion-a-year space program and 18 000 workers.
A former secretary of the navy and onetime chief financial officer for the Pentagon. O’Keefe brings strong management skills and close ties to the White House to the agency. He previously had served 8 years on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Until O’Keefe can be confirmed, Daniel Mulville, NASA’s deputy associate administrator, has been named acting director.
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Joseph H. Rothenberg, associate administrator for space flight at NASA Headquarters, will retire on 15 December. A former director of Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, he was appointed to his position in 1995.
Rothenberg joined Goddard in 1983 as operations manager for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). He led the team responsible for developing and conducting orbital operations of the HST. And later, in 1993, he developed and executed the first servicing mission of the telescope. He is credited with laying the groundwork for the telescope’s recovery and restoring public confidence in that mission.
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The Desert Research Institute has awarded the 2001 Peter B. Wagner Memorial Award for Women in the Atmospheric Sciences to Ana Lía Quijano, who recently earned a Ph.D. in atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University at Colorado at Boulder. The fourth recipient of the Wagner Award, Quijano has accepted a post-doctoral appointment at The Imperial College of Oxford in England.
The $1,000 annual award was established in 1998 by former Nevada Lt. Gov. Sue Wagner in memory of her husband, Peter, a DRI scientist who died in the 1980 crash of a DRI research aircraft. The purpose of the national award is to encourage women graduate students in the atmospheric sciences. The recipient is determined competitively based on submission of a scientific paper.
Quijano’s winning research paper evaluated the effectiveness of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) satellite as a means of detecting the levels of atmospheric dust that often spread around the globe from a regional source. Her analyses reviewed TOMS data taken as major storms were producing high levels of dust on several continents. She concluded that TOMS, which has provided daily, global measurements of stratospheric ozone since 1978, was not reliable for monitoring dust.
For further information on the Wagner Memorial Award, visit the DRI Web site at http://www.dri.edu/Admin/wagner.html or contact Dr. Claudia Miner, executive director of DRI’s Institutional Advancement: (775) 674-7551 or cminer@dri.edu.
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