Editor: Jim Elliot
Contributors: Alan Weinstein, Ginny Frost, and Julie Burba
LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS
WEATHER NEWS
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ENVIRONMENT AND GLOBAL CHANGE
GENERAL NEWS
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The Council of the American Physical Society (APS) issued a statement 6 May cautioning against potentially harmful funding reductions for the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Research (OER).
The statement was sent to the House Science Committee, the House and Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittees, and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on 16 May.
An accompanying letter from APS President Robert Schrieffer urged members of Congress to "examine the policy consequences of these reductions and take appropriate actions to maintain the health of the research activities."
The APS statement said, "The cuts being considered would seriously damage a major component of the Nation's outstanding basic research activities in universities as well as national laboratories. They would threaten our Nation's quality of life and our future economic competitiveness and military security.
"For more than half a century, every Congress and every President has recognized the unique role of science in sustaining the Nation's world-power status. They have consistently given Federal investment in basic research strong bipartisan backing. In spite of extraordinary budgetary pressures, leaders in both political parties continue to maintain this bipartisan commitment.
"They have properly identified the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as key sponsors of scientific research. However, they have overlooked the prominent roles played by some programs in the mission agencies. This is now particularly true of the Office of Energy Research.
"More generally, among Federal agencies, the DOE through OER is the leading supporter of basic research in the physical sciences, accounting for almost as much Federal spending as NASA, the Department of Defense and the NSF combined. In support of basic research as a whole, the DOE ranks third among Federal agencies. With its progenitors, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration, the DOE-funded research has led to more than 60 Nobel prizes, attesting to the high quality and impact of the work it supports."
The statement also said that OER support over the years had generated a wealth of technological advances "that have dramatically improved the energy security of the Nation."
"Proposed cuts," the statement concluded, "would diminish our quality of life and our Nation's future economic competitiveness and military security."
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Meteorologists from NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) and from sister meteorological services in Australia and Canada are poised to provide the necessary weather support services for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. The games begin 19 July and end 4 August.
The NWS has made a commitment "to dedicate the world's best meteorological science, skill, service and technology to keep the 1996 games weatherwise and weather safe," explained Elbert W. (Joe) Friday, Assistant NOAA Administrator for Weather Services.
"To that end," Friday said, "two state-of-the-art Olympic Weather Support Offices have been created . . . equipped with some of the latest meteorological technology available and staffed with some of our best meteorologists. . . "
"It is important to take notice of the fact that the efforts being expended in providing these services, both by NWS and our sister private sector partners, will have lasting benefits," he continued.
The weather support offices are located to best serve the various Olympic venues. To support the venues in the Atlanta area and outlying areas in northern and western Georgia and eastern Tennessee, the support office will be in Peachtree City, GA. The office on Wilmington Island will provide support for the yachting venue.
The technology being used at the Olympics, he said, is compatible with the technology that will be used in NWS offices elsewhere when the agency completes its modernization and restructuring. The equipment being used during the Olympics will continue to be used long after the games are over.
More than two million people are expected to attend the games, which continue at 36 different sites (venues) over 16 days. At any given time in the course of the games, anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 people will be exposed to the elements, either by attendance at the outdoor events or being en route to the various activities, according to Olympic officials.
Weather support operations will begin 6 July, the day the Olympic Village opens in downtown Atlanta. The office will provide services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, according to NWS officials. The Marine Weather Support Office will focus on the yachting venue only. Meteorologists from that office already have undergone intensive training and actually provided forecast and warning support operations last year for an international regatta taking place in the same area scheduled for the Olympic competition. The team will reassemble at the Marine Weather Support Office on 26 June to undergo refresher training and begin formal weather support operations on 6 July, the day the marine venue opens. The support will continue uninterrupted through 3 August, the day after the yachting competition concludes.
The Olympic meteorologists will be interested particularly in the weather within the Olympic Ring in downtown Atlanta where more than one half of the events will take place, as well as other sites outside of Atlanta. The Olympic Ring is an imaginary circle with a radius of 1.5 miles (2.5 km). Within the ring are venues for 18 sports (10 of which will expose athletes and spectators to the weather), the Olympic Village, the Olympic Family Hotel, and the Olympic Center. Venues outside the ring include: Olympic Park at Stone Mountain, GA; Georgia International Horse Park in Conyers, GA; Wolf Creek Trap and Skeet Range, Fulton County, GA; Lake Sidney Lanier, northeast of Atlanta; Wassaw Sound and the coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean, southeast of Atlanta; Ocoee River, southeast Tennessee; Athens, GA; and Columbus, GA. Seventeen events are scheduled for these locations.
Some of the weather equipment to be used together operationally for the first time include the following.
Special "ETA-15" and "ETA-8" numerical model guidance runs will be made twice each day by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction in Camp Springs, MD. These supplementary model runs, made on a Cray Research Corporation supercomputer, will provide timely and high resolution information guidance to Olympic forecasters.
The Local Analysis and Prediction System (LAPS), designed by NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory in Boulder, CO, will enable forecasters to analyze surface conditions much more rapidly and with higher resolution than before.
The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS), developed at Colorado State University and run on an IBM parallel processing computer, will use data from the LAPS to generate very high resolution local domain weather predictions, resulting in much more precise and timely forecasts than were ever before possible.
The Warning Decision Support System (WDSS), developed by NOAA's National Severe Storms Forecast Laboratory in Miami, FL, integrates data from many sources, including WSR-88D radars and lightning strike sensors, to generate numerous products to assist the meteorologists in making fully informed decisions about storms and their potential to produce severe weather.
The Interactive Computer Worded Forecast (ICWF) software, developed by NWS's Techniques Development Laboratory, will allow meteorologists to create highly detailed forecasts for more locations than ever before possible.
RAMM Advanced Meteorological Satellite Demonstration and Interpretation System (RAMSDIS) will provide Olympic forecasters with a special family of high resolution GOES satellite images that will allow them to overlay surface and upper-air (radiosonde) data on the satellite imagery.
A "mesonetwork" of weather sensors will collect weather information at more than 60 sites throughout the southeast. The network is composed of sensors maintained by various university and government agencies. Surface observation data from this source will be available at 15-minute intervals rather than hourly, as is the case for standard NWS observations.
With these capabilities, NWS officials believe they will have significant lead time for warnings of any threatening weather. Weather parameters such as temperature and winds will be forecast at 3-hour intervals rather than at the 12-hour increments currently used by NWS.
In addition, weather forecasts will include an Ultraviolet Index, localized for each venue, which will provide important information to help people plan their outdoor activities in ways that prevent overexposure to the sun's rays.
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An automated thunderstorm forecasting tool developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, will undergo its first major test this summer.
The Auto-nowcaster, which spots incipient storms and predicts their development up to a half-hour in advance, will be tested this month (June) at the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Integrated Terminal Weather Support Site near Memphis, TN. The FAA is supporting the project, and collaborators in the Memphis test include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Lincoln Laboratories and NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory.
A cumulus cloud can blossom into a thunderstorm in as little as 10 to 20 minutes, meteorologists explain. Although operational computer forecast models have proven useful in predicting large-scale weather developments 12 to 48 hours in advance, they do not have the resolution to make accurate forecasts on the thunderstorm scale, officials said.
With the help of new techniques for analyzing Doppler radar data, the Auto-nowcaster looks for gust fronts and other lines of converging air on which storms might be induced to form, they explained, adding that these boundaries cannot be simulated directly by larger-scale computer models. Other parts of the Auto-nowcaster examine whether atmospheric conditions are sufficient to support storms once formed and how storm motion might evolve over time.
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Airplanes and ground vehicles, in one of the largest storm-related field programs of this summer, will probe intense Colorado thunderstorms to document chemical, dynamic, and electric interchange between thunderstorms and their environment.
Entitled "Deep Convection and the Composition of the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere," the field program will take place in northeast Colorado during late June and July, officials said. It is one of three parts of STERAO, the Stratosphere–Troposphere Experiments: Radiation, Aerosols and Ozone. STERAO is a multiyear study of the chemistry and dynamics of the upper troposphere (the atmosphere's lowest 15 kilometers where weather is shaped) and the lower stratosphere (the sensitive zone between 15 and 45 kilometers where the earth's protective ozone layer resides).
Water vapor and nitrogen are of particular interest in STERAO, according to the scientists. Thunderstorms bring vast amounts of water vapor from the lower to the upper troposphere, but the exact trajectories are uncertain. Lightening is a significant source of active nitrogen, which can lead to the production of ozone, but the nitrogen's sources and sinks are not yet fully understood.
A high-altitude WB-57F aircraft, recently acquired by the National Science Foundation and operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), is expected to make its research debut on this project. Also in the plans are a Lockheed P-3 "Hurricane Hunter" aircraft from NOAA and a Cessna Citation, operated by the University of North Dakota.
Operations will be based at NCAR's Research Aviation Facility at Buckley Air National Guard Base, east of Denver, and at an operations center for radar and ground-based teams near Greeley, CO, where the Colorado State University and CHILL (University of Chicago/Illinois State Water Survey) radar are located.
Among the instruments probing the Colorado storms will be two mobile Doppler radars that can gather data from within several kilometers of severe storms, a lightning interferometer from France that will make unique three-dimensional observations from lightning channels, and a variety of devices for air sampling and analysis aboard the aircraft to assess the chemical makeup of air in or near the storms both at high and low altitudes.
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A National Weather Service disaster survey team reviewing weather service performance for the 21 April storm system that spawned a tornado that struck Fort Smith and Van Buren, AR, reported that during a two-hour period four tornadoes—two in Arkansas and two in Oklahoma—were tracked.
The warning team at the Tulsa, OK, National Weather Service Forecast Office, using Doppler radar data, issued four tornado warnings—two with 30-minute lead times, one with a 25-minute lead time, and one with a 4-minute lead time.
The survey team's results show that as the storm neared Fort Smith, forecasters who were relying on one particular Doppler radar product believed the storm, while still dangerous, was unlikely to spawn tornadoes. Based on that analysis, the Tulsa forecasters issued a severe thunderstorm warning rather than a tornado warning 16 minutes before the onset of the tornado. The Tulsa office upgraded that warning to a tornado warning 4 minutes before the tornado touched down in Fort Smith at 11:12 P.M., the survey team reported.
Communication line failures due to power disruptions resulting from the storm prevented this warning from reaching local emergency service officials, however. As a result, the Civil Defense sirens were not activated.
The survey team concluded that three factors influenced the decisions made by the forecasters:
Based on these findings, the survey team recommended that:
The same storm system that spawned the Fort Smith/Van Buren tornado produced three other tornadoes between 9:27 P.M. and 12:15 A.M. The Tulsa Weather Forecast Office provided 25- to 30-minute warning lead times before the onset of these three other tornadoes. The national average lead time is 8 minutes, according to weather service officials.
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New in-flight icing advisories issued nationwide by the National Weather Service's Aviation Weather Center (AWC) in Kansas City, MO, are warning pilots of possibly dangerous icing conditions caused by freezing drizzle in targeted areas. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder and forecasters at the AWC's Experimental Forecast Facility teamed up for intensive research leading to the new technology, funded by the Federal Aviation Administration. The efforts follow the crash of American Eagle Flight 4184 near Roselawn, IN, on 31 October 1994.
The crash raised questions about how seemingly nonthreatening weather conditions could have caused hazardous icing. Because strong winds and heavy rain at Chicago O'Hare International Airport were deemed too risky for landing, the American Eagle circled for a half hour at 10,000 feet. Suddenly the plane flipped sideways, eventually crashing head-first into the ground. All 68 passengers and crew members died. The ATR-72 aircraft was certified to fly in icing conditions, which were forecast for northern Indiana at that time.
Marcia Politovich and Ben Bernstein of NCAR, John Marwitz of the University of Wyoming, Martin Ralph and Paul Neiman of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and James Bresch of the University of Washington worked together to analyze the weather associated with the accident. Their mission was to identify the atmospheric parameters at the time and place of the crash, including temperature, humidity, winds, liquid water content, and possible droplet size. They used a special computer model, called the NCAR/Penn State mesoscale model, to gain further insight that the available observations could not provide.
"Fortunately," says Bernstein, "forecasters on duty made hard copies of the weather radar images immediately following the crash. Otherwise, we wouldn't have had that information to work with, because normally it's not recorded."
The research team concluded that the relatively warm temperatures at cloud top (-5°C) combined with vertical wind shear could have produced large drizzle drops of supercooled water—water that is still liquid even though temperatures are just under freezing, or 0°C. These supercooled drops would have frozen when they hit the plane. Although the resulting ice on the front of the wing may have been removed by deicing boots, other large drops could have flowed back over the wing before freezing, creating crusty ridges of ice that can disrupt airflow and ultimately destabilize a plane.
"We don't know for sure that these large drizzle drops existed at the time the plane went down," says Politovich. "Direct proof is lacking, but the weather evidence and the behavior of the airplane suggest their presence."
With these findings in hand, last December the FAA asked the AWC, the part of the National Weather Service (NWS) that creates the official icing forecasts for aircraft, to produce advisories that warn pilots specifically of freezing drizzle. General advisories, called AIRMETs (airmen's meteorological information), already existed as a routing product of the AWC to inform pilots of moderate icing and other significant aviation weather conditions. Historically these have been too general to be used for avoiding in-flight icing caused by localized freezing drizzle.
Meanwhile NCAR's Bernstein had been working on creating an algorithm to automate freezing drizzle/icing advisories for areas smaller than those covered by the AIRMETs. Using airport surface readings of precipitation type and computer model forecasts of temperature and humidity, Bernstein could identify the location of much of the freezing drizzle in the U.S. airspace. He called his new algorithm the "stovepipe" because it uses data for columns of air above the observations taken on the ground.
With the new algorithm, freezing drizzle aloft can be automatically diagnosed across smaller areas as well as for the whole country. To check the new system's accuracy, Bernstein is comparing his predictions with reports from pilots flying through these areas. Pilots can see signs of ice on the plane's nose and wings through the cockpit window, and they can feel a difference in how the airplane flies as the ice builds up. Each time a pilot reports icing within a stovepipe volume of air, it counts as a hit. The smaller the volume of air, the more precise and successful the prediction.
So far, says Bernstein, "a high percentage of pilot icing reports are falling within these targeted prediction areas. That's exactly what we wanted—to zoom in on the freezing drizzle in time to warn pilots about possible icing."
According to Ron Olson, the AWC's science and operations officer, Bernstein's stovepipe algorithm is one of five new tools and procedures employed by AWC to meet the FAA's request for more specific icing advisories. The other four are an earlier NCAR algorithm; a manual prepared by Bernstein and Olson on how to detect and forecast freezing drizzle; daily briefings in which the latest scientific research and weather data are presented to forecasters, researchers, and managers; and a neural net. The last is an artificial intelligence tool that produces maps of icing intensity using temperature, relative humidity, and convection data from two new, high resolution weather models running at the NWS's National Centers for Environmental Prediction in Camp Springs, MD.
"My job is to keep the scientists and forecasters interacting with each other and to make sure the research is operationally directed," says Olson. "That way we're poised to meet new FAA requirements as quickly as possible."
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The Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is ready to acquire and distribute data about the oceans from the first of a new series of environmental satellites to be launched by Japan in August, agency officials announced 31 May.
The data will be distributed electronically to users in the United States, Japan, and other countries for use in weather forecasting and environmental monitoring, according to agency officials.
The Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) will be launched by the National Space Development Agency (NASDA) of Japan. NOAA, which has enhanced its processing and communications systems to support the data, will use and share products from several instruments aboard the spacecraft.
"NOAA will be a near real-time user of data from the NASA Scatterometer and NASDA's Ocean Color and Temperature Scanner," said Helen Wood, NOAA's director of satellite data processing and distribution. "Access to these data will provide the United States and other users with enhanced environmental monitoring capabilities through NOAA's ocean remote-sensing program."
The scatterometer will measure wind speed and direction over the ocean. Ocean color data will play a vital role in protecting coastal ecosystems and building sustainable fisheries.
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NASA and its Mission to Planet Earth program received praise and support in two separate Senate hearings on 16 May.
An authorization hearing of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space was chaired by Conrad Burns (R-MT). Burns, a self-proclaimed "natural resources type of person," told the hearing audience, "we should know as much about our planet as we possibly can." Burns was joined for a time by Larry Pressler (R-SD), chairman of the full Commerce Committee, and Byron Dorgan (D-ND), both of whom expressed support for Mission to Planet Earth.
NASA Associate Administrator for Mission to Planet Earth, Charles Kennel, who has announced plans to leave NASA to return to UCLA, described the program and said that it "concerns scientific issues deeper and more extensive than [just] global warming." He reported that since 1990, Mission to Planet Earth's total budget has been cut from $17 billion to $6.8 billion, and warned that the program was "close to the point where we can say that further budget reductions will translate into knowledge reductions." This statement was echoed by other witnesses.
Later that day, some of the same participants faced each other again at a hearing of the Senate VA/HUD/Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee. Again, Members were supportive of NASA, and voiced concerns over significant budget reductions projected for future years. Chairman Kit Bond (R-MO) cautioned that such reductions would "have devastating consequences on NASA programs." He asked whether it would be fiscally prudent to terminate some programs now rather than run into shortfalls in coming years.
NASA administrator Dan Goldin replied that he was confident he could work with the administration to resolve the outyear budget problems, and said he had been directed by the White House not to take any "precipitous actions" such as terminating programs this year.
Ranking Minority Member Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) questioned whether NASA programs such as Mission to Planet Earth were sufficiently funded in the outyears. Goldin continued to insist that problems could be worked out. She also pressed Goldin on a recent announcement about cutting NASA's headquarters staff in half, a reduction of 700 employees. Goldin replied that the number was an initial target supplied for guidance, but that he was working with the associate administrators to determine the size of the staff actually needed. He expected to have an answer by mid-July.
Mikulski said that if there was still "a lack of clarity" on the NASA outyear budget by mid-June, she would ask the administration to clarify its plans.
Goldin cited development of a new launch capability as NASA's highest priority for a new start, and SIRTF as the highest priority for a new start in space science. When Richard Shelby (R-AL) pointed out that space science was not among five major NASA goals identified by the administration, Goldin answered that he was working to achieve a balance among all the programs, but that, due to an emphasis on "faster, better, cheaper" missions, the space science budget was coming down before NASA set out to make cuts.
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An international effort, coordinated by NOAA, NASA, and DOD, is expected to make one-hour geomagnetic storm warnings a reality by late 1997.
While not a daily occurrence, storms in outer space can cause major disruptions to modern technological systems on Earth. The geomagnetic storms develop in space when masses of highly energetic charged particles are ejected from the sun and subsequently hit the Earth's magnetic field. When the Earth encounters these storms, extraordinary fluctuations occur, severe enough to upset delicate technological systems on satellites and on the ground, where they can cause power blackouts.
In late 1997, NASA intends to launch a research satellite, the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE), to measure the chemical composition of escaping particles from the sun. It also will take background measurements of the interplanetary magnetic field and the solar wind. These measurements, promptly relayed to Earth, can be used to develop a one-hour alert by forecasters. Data from the ACE mission will provide information of the solar wind's speed, density, and magnetic field, major factors when issuing these alerts.
"By placing a satellite in front of Earth so that it intercepts the solar wind before it reaches us, we can warn radio and satellite operators, electric power control centers and others of the upcoming threat," according to Ernie Hildner, director of NOAA's Space Environment Center in Boulder, CO.
A disturbance traveling outward from the sun toward Earth will hit the ACE spacecraft about an hour before it reaches Earth. When this happens, the information will be transmitted immediately to Earth, making a one-hour alert possible with almost 100% accuracy, officials said.
Power companies are extremely interested in knowing when these storms will occur, and for good reason. In 1989, during a period of high solar activity, a geomagnetic storm caused a power blackout in Canada's Quebec Province. Fortunately, the blackout was confined to Quebec, but equipment malfunctioned throughout the United States.
NOAA and NASA arranged to modify the ACE spacecraft using NOAA funds to enable the satellite to broadcast its background data continuously. The data broadcasts will be called Real Time Solar Wind (RTSW) data.
The U.S. Air Force Space Command has agreed to track the ACE satellite and capture RTSW data with its global network of satellite dishes, the Satellite Control at the 50th Space Wing, Colorado Springs, CO. In addition to the Air Force and NASA, international partners have been sought to acquire data during the times the Sun is in view of their ground stations. In exchange, they will receive all of the RTSW and alerts and warnings issued by the Space Environment Center.
After acquisition on the ground, the information will be relayed immediately to space weather forecast centers at the Space Environment Center and the 50th Weather Squadron, Colorado Springs. Forecasters at the Space Environment Center and at the Air Force weather squadron will use the data to develop geomagnetic storm alerts, which then will be distributed to the military and civilian communities.
The ACE mission is expected to last for three years. Planners from the involved agencies are examining ways to acquire solar wind data continuously after the ACE mission ends, officials explained.
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A low-cost aircraft navigational system developed by NASA is making it possible for scientists to make precise maps of ice sheets that should yield valuable data on the potential effects of global climate change, according to NASA officials.
The system, which uses a personal computer to provide navigational data to the cockpit, allows aircraft pilots to fly flight paths to an accuracy of 1 foot, officials explained. This allows the scientists on board the aircraft to map the icy terrain below to an accuracy of 4 inches, they added.
In May, NASA and university researchers began their sixth mission since 1991 to map the ice sheets of Greenland. These missions are providing researchers with a baseline set of measurements to help them better understand glacial changes that may be due to global climate change.
The new navigation system took less than six months to develop, according to Wayne Wright, system developer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA. The system currently uses an IBM-compatible 486 personal computer, which can be installed in an aircraft using a laptop computer. Total cost of the system is less than $3,000, Wright said.
A receiver in the aircraft tuned to the global positioning system of orbiting satellites acquires precise position information and then compares the readings to a predetermined flight path. The navigation system then generates steering signals that are sent to the autopilot to direct the aircraft toward its optimal path.
In addition, the system presents an aircraft position display to the pilot. This display allows the pilot to determine if the aircraft is right or left of the flight path centerline to within 1 foot. The system also can show the pilot position data on a larger scale, such as the entire flight path.
Scientists estimate that a 10-inch decrease in the average height of the central Greenland ice sheet would result in a 0.04-inch increase in sea level of the world's oceans.
During the mission, which ends in June, a P-3B aircraft from Wallops will carry instruments for mapping the ice sheets. The instruments include the Airborne Topographic Mapper 1 (ATM-1), a profiling laser system from Goddard and an ice-penetrating radar from the University of Kansas. Another instrument, still under development, is a smaller version of the ATM-1. The 400-pound ATM-II is approximately half the size of ATM-1.
Researchers located on the ice in Greenland will conduct ground truth studies beneath the flight path of the aircraft to verify the airborne data. The field team includes researchers from Ohio State University in Columbus, The University of Arizona in Tucson, and the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
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The NOAA ship Discoverer returned to Seattle recently after having completed a seven-month research cruise to help scientists determine the role of the oceans in regulating the chemistry of the atmosphere and thus the earth's climate.
The ship, which deployed 11 October 1995, "provided the platform for two of the largest experiments ever conducted to determine the effects of atmospheric pollution on global climate and to understand the physics of climate change on Earth," according to NOAA Corps Captain Steve Manzo, commanding officer.
Research operations spanned the entire Pacific Ocean from south of New Zealand beyond the Antarctic Circle to north of Kodiak, AK, and westward from Seattle almost to the Indian Ocean, nearly 40,000 miles of travel.
More than 100 scientists from NOAA and other research institutions in 11 nations measured—in atmospheric environments that ranged from minimally polluted to volcanic plumes—the varying amounts of microscopic particles, called aerosols, that can cool the earth's surface by reflecting sunlight back into space. That experiment, called ACE-1, was highly successful, said Timothy Bates, project chief scientist from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.
In another experiment, the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), NOAA and university scientists traced the invasion of fossil-fuel-derived carbon dioxide and other human-made trace gases, including chlorofluorocarbons, into the intermediate and deep waters of the western South Pacific from the waters off Antarctica to the equator.
This final WOCE cruise completed a major effort begun in 1990 by scientists from more than 16 countries to survey the varying characteristics of all the oceans. A total of 67 WOCE cruises were conducted.
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Following a competitive procurement process for high-performance computing equipment, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) announced that it is entering into contract negotiations with Federal Computing Corporation, a U.S. company that integrates systems of computers and related equipment. The FCC bid includes four NEC SX-4/32 supercomputers and U.S.-made keyboard equipment from Maximum Strategy and Netstar.
The system, which will be installed at NCAR in Boulder, CO, will increase the computing capability available to the scientific community served by NCAR by more than a factor of 10 by 1998.
UCAR sought proposals to install and periodically upgrade high-performance computing equipment for the dedicated execution of large, long-running climate models and other complex models. Fourteen vendors were invited to offer proposals for providing the best possible computer system(s) for a specified price. Further, this equipment must enhance and facilitate the development of improved models and analysis tools for advancing the atmospheric sciences over the next decade. Vendors who could provide productive, stable computing environments with the highest levels of performance and with attractive cost/performance ratios were encouraged to respond to the request for proposal (RFP) regardless of whether the system they were proposing was vector parallel, massively parallel, or clustered.
NEC, Cray Research, and Fujitsu Corporation emerged as finalists. After live test demonstrations, the corporations submitted best and final offers, which were to include an aggregate computing capacity of at least 45 gigaflops by October 1988 and, as set out by the RFP, a five-year $35 million funding scenario. All of the competition met this requirement. According to UCAR, "The ensemble of equipment offered by FCC (using NEC equipment) provided a distinct advantage in that it well surpasses the request by a factor of two."
The decision has attracted the attention of a few members of Congress who have questioned why American-made computers were not selected. Cray Research has long dominated the supercomputer market for atmospheric research and operational weather forecasting, including the supercomputers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Representative David Obey (D-WI) has expressed concern that the computer is being dumped on the U.S. market by Japanese producers. Dr. Anne Petersen, deputy director of the National Science Foundation, stated that the NSF, which must approve the contract award, will require that UCAR give this issue due consideration and that UCAR obtain sufficient documentation to demonstrate that the proposal does not reflect any "noncompetitive practices among contractors that may restrict or eliminate competition or otherwise restrain trade" in violation of the antidumping laws.
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In a report to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the National Science and Technology Committee (NSTC), a cabinet-level coordinating body for federal science policies, indicated that U.S. presence in the Antarctic "at the current level of investment, . . . is cost effective in advancing American scientific and geopolitical objectives and, from a science perspective, supports the continuation of three stations with year-round presence."
The 67-page report, released in April, added that, "The NSTC reaffirmation of U.S. policy, including the need for a continuing presence at the South Pole, implies that by the time the Amundsen–Scott Station reaches the end of its useful life, it will need to have been rebuilt or replaced."
Therefore, the report continued, the NSTC advises NSF to reevaluate its proposed design. "The plan will benefit greatly from further cost-benefit analyses.
"To squeeze out sufficient funds for the station, the NSTC advocates consideration of such cost-cutting options as alternative management approaches, advanced communications technologies, automated data-gathering techniques, and international cost-sharing," the report read.
Beyond those general suggestions, the NSTC avoided making any choices on reducing the program's scope. Instead, it "recommends that an external panel be convened . . . to explore options for sustaining the high level of USAP science activity under realistic constrained funding levels."
In conclusion, the report said that "the influential presence of the United States in Antarctica helps maintain the existing state of international peace and stability on the continent . . . The NSTC concludes that present U.S. policy and practice with respect to the USAP are well-justified."
The Senate committee had directed the study.
The United States has maintained an active presence in the Antarctic for more than 30 years. The freedom of the United States and other countries to perform research there, as well as a decision-making mechanism for potential conflicts, was codified in the 1959 Antarctic Treaty.
Currently, the U.S. Antarctic Program is managed by NSF as a single integrated program under a 1982 presidential directive to maintain year-round occupation of a South Pole Station and two coastal stations.
The program deploys approximately 2,500 personnel to the area each year to conduct research for a number of federal agencies, including the NSF, NOAA, NASA, DOE, and USGS. Annual cost is approximately $196 million, including research, infrastructure, logistics and operational support, three research stations, and two research vessels.
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A recent survey by the National Science Foundation indicates that while Americans might not know too much about science, they believe scientific research is worthwhile.
The survey, conducted among 2,006 American adults, showed that only 25% got passing grades when it came to knowing about basic science and economics. Even fewer of those surveyed were well informed about technical subjects.
The worst showing came when those surveyed were asked to define scientific terms. Only about 9% knew what a molecule was, and only 21% could define DNA.
Even more fundamental questions stumped many. For instance, less than half knew that the Earth orbits the sun annually.
On environmental questions, one-third of those surveyed understood the effects of a thinning ozone layer; 14% could identify the locations of ozone holes, and only 5% could give a scientific explanation of acid rain.
Even money questions threw a lot of those questioned. A 10 point quiz on economics showed that only 22% could answer correctly seven or more of the questions.
"Only 10 percent feel very well informed about science and technology, and studies show that only a small segment of the population has a strong grasp of basic scientific ideas," according to the report.
On the 10-part quiz testing scientific understanding, only 27% could answer seven or more questions correctly.
Although the survey found a fundamental lack of scientific understanding, it found that 72% of American adults believe scientific research is worthwhile. Only 13% took an opposing view.
Among college graduates, 90% thought the benefits of research outweighed the risks, while only 48% of those who did not finish high school felt that way.
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Contributed by Alan Weinstein
The European Geophysical Society celebrated its 25th birthday at its XXI General Assembly on 6–10 May 1996 in The Hague, the Netherlands. Over 2,500 solid, fluid, and gaseous geophysicists from both western and eastern Europe were joined by approximately 200 from overseas, including about 50 from the United States.
Born during the 1971 International Union of Geology and Geophysics (IUGG) meeting in Moscow, the EGS has evolved from its early focus on geophysics into a full spectrum forum for scientists interested in the geophysical domain from the core of the Earth to the sun. Its membership numbers approximately 3,000, with approximately 10% from the Americas. Of interest to the AMS community, the society includes a section on ocean and atmospheres and publishes journals devoted to ocean and atmospheric physics (Annales Geophysicae), climate (Climate Dynamics), and atmospheric chemistry (Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry).
The XXI Assembly resembled an AMS annual meeting, with an early business meeting, an awards ceremony, exhibitors, and many (105) frequently concurrent scientific sessions. Awards of note to AMS readers included the Guttenberg Medal for . . .contributions to solid earth in general, to Frank Press; the Nansen Medal for. . .distinguished research in oceanography, to Anders Stigebrandt; and the Milankovich Medal for. . . outstanding achievements in climatological sciences, to Lennart Bengtsson.
The 25 sessions concerning oceans and atmospheres (OA) included general ones on open ocean and coastal processes, NWP, and nonlinear processes, as well as specialized sessions on boundary layers and turbulence, the Baltic (Sea) Experiment (BALTEX), and air–sea interaction. General impressions were that European geophysical research is equal, or even superior, to the United States in observational science and technology, and behind in modeling for research. The former is demonstrated by the many papers on specific field campaigns using a wide suite of both commercially available and experimental instrumentation on the surface, on towers and/or in aircraft. Much valuable data and some new theory (e.g., stable boundary layer depth scaling using stability based, Brunt-Vaisala frequency in place of kinematically based Coriolis) are evolving from all this activity. Most of these campaigns were over land in order to understand boundary layer processes for pollution interests.
With the exception of modeling at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), ocean and atmospheric modeling for research appears behind similar activity in the United States. For example, in BALTEX, there was no two-way coupled modeling, and most model comparisons of one-way models showed more similarity between models than any showed with observations. Clearly, much needs to done in this area, both in modeling itself and in using models to elucidate processes.
It is clear that the European geophysics community is coming together with such pan-European activities as the EGS, ECMWF, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Community's Marine Science and Technology (MAST) program. The EGS's XII Assembly favorably displayed much of that activity.
The Hague is an outstanding meeting venue, with excellent conference facilities for daytime work and beautiful outdoors facilities, the World Court and the Court of Military Justice (two completely different courts), and several museums (including a showing of the Vermeer Exhibit) for after hours enjoyment and informal meetings.
Fuller details of the Assembly can be found on the ONREUR Homepage at: http://WWW.ehis.navy.mil/ or by contacting Alan Weinstein at ONREUR, 223 Old Marylebone Road, London 5TH NW1, England; aweinstein@onreur.navy.mil
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Dr. Harry C. Holloway, NASA's associate administrator for the Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications, has completed his temporary assignment at NASA Headquarters and is returning to the School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD. Holloway holds the distinction of being the first associate administrator for that office, established by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin in March 1993. Among Holloway's accomplishments during his NASA tenure were the establishment of programs emphasizing experimental sciences on orbit and the development of technologies to support those programs. He also developed the plan for the scientific integration of the International Space Station.
Dr. Piers Sellers, a scientist in the Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, has been selected as a member of the newest astronaut class. He is one of 35 people—10 pilots and 25 mission specialists—chosen from a pool of 2,432 applicants and will report to Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, in August to begin training. Sellers was born in southern England and raised around the world while his father fulfilled assignments to British Army posts in Cyprus, Malta, the Middle East, and Europe. He earned a degree in ecology and a Ph.D. in biometeorology and came to Goddard in 1982. After reporting to Houston, he will be assigned a specialty area in which he will undergo at least another year of technical training in preparation for an assignment to a Space Shuttle mission.
Eric Barron, who served two terms as chair of the Climate Research Committee, was honored at a reception in Washington on 10 June. A reception in his honor was held during a meeting of the committee, held at the Georgetown Facility of the National Academy of Sciences.
As yet, NASA has not named a replacement for Dr. Charles F. Kennel, associate administrator for the Office of Mission to Planet Earth. Kennel announced in January that he would leave NASA in late spring to return to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is to become the new executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer of UCLA. NASA officials said a search for a replacement continues. Reports indicate that in the interim between Kennel's departure and the naming of his successor, Deputy Associate Administrator for Mission to Planet Earth William F. Townsend will serve as acting associate administrator.
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Leading university and federal administrators, graduate students, professors, employers, and representatives from disciplinary societies will gather at a National Convocation on Science and Engineering Doctoral Education on 18 June 1996 to discuss an action plan for meeting the education needs of future scientists and engineers. This national convocation runs from 8:30 A.M. to 8 P.M. at the National Academy of Sciences building, 2100 C Street, NW, Washington, DC. The convocation is sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
The National Weather Service's National Centers for Environmental Predictions (NCEP) held a day-long media event at its Science Center in Camp Springs, MD, on 1 May. A group of reporters was welcomed by Ronald D. McPherson, director, and given background briefings on activities about which the center is concerned. Breakout sessions were conducted on Advances in Climate Prediction, Understanding Space Weather, Improvements in Numerical Modeling and NCEP Forecast tools for the Olympic Games. The NCEP serves as the focal point for the weather service's data collection, analysis, and prediction operations. It has nine components that provide a wide spectrum of forecasts: the Storm Prediction Center, colocated with the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, OK; the Aviation Weather Center, in Kansas City, MO; the Tropical Prediction Center, in Coral Gables, FL.; the Space Environment Center, the Climate prediction Center, the Hydrometeorological Precipitation Center, the Environmental Modeling Center, and the NCEP Central Operations, all in Camp Springs, MD.
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