May 18, 2009 | On April 21, Lafayette-based photojournalist James Balog visited the Mesa Lab to present glacier images from his Extreme Ice Survey. The presentation was part of ESSL/CGD’s seminar series.

 The Extreme Ice Survey is the most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted using ground-based, real-time photography. It features time-lapse videos, taken in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, and the Rocky Mountains, that document the rapid changes occurring in Earth's frozen realms. The videos are supplemented with repeat photography in Iceland, the Alps, and Bolivia.

 Guided by the recommendations of glaciologists, Balog and his team installed time-lapse cameras at accessible and photogenic sites that represent regional conditions and have high scientific value. The solar-powered cameras are programmed to shoot once an hour during daylight, capturing approximately 4,000 images per year for a total projected archive of nearly 500,000 photographs by completion of the survey.

 Balog, a geomorphologist by training, became interested in photographing changes in ice after a 2005 assignment photographing glaciers in Iceland for The New Yorker. “I feel it’s vitally important to show what’s happening with the canary in the coal mine,” he told a crowd of several dozen at the Mesa Lab, referring to the special vulnerability of glaciers to climate change.

 On June 18, NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt will speak at the Center Green auditorium at 4:00 p.m. and sign copies of his new book, Climate Change: Picturing the Science. The book is a collection of essays by climate scientists on the nature of human-induced climate change, the ways scientists have come to understand and measure the risks that it poses, and the options that we face. Schmidt, a climatologist, is the co-founder of RealClimate.org, where he is a contributing editor. More details will appear in Today@UCAR.

April 29, 2009 | On April 1, Bill Kuo (COSMIC) took the reins of the Developmental Testbed Center, a Boulder-based joint effort between NCAR and NOAA. The DTC supports the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF), letting scientists test and explore the model in a setting that incorporates the perspectives of both research scientists and operational forecasters. Its main objective is to expedite technology transfer between the research and operational communities. Bill will remain COSMIC director on a part-time basis.

 Bill replaces founding director Bob Gall, who has since retired. NOAA’s Steven Koch will continue as deputy director. Bill helped create WRF in the late 1990s after he and Bob agreed that NCAR’s community modeling work should benefit operational numerical weather prediction. The DTC’s two dozen staff members are drawn mainly from RAL and NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory. “I would say the DTC is one of the shining examples of NCAR and NOAA working together,” Bill says. Additional support comes from the Air Force Weather Agency.

 The DTC provides a wide variety of techniques for verifying the skill of forecast models. Its dedicated computing time allows for new code to be tested for as long as several months, helping to ensure that it’s up to the rigors of day-to-day forecasting use. Increasingly, the center is working on ways to entrain more data into models. It will offer a tutorial for NOAA’s Hurricane WRF model that will be released to the community in the coming year as a coupled atmosphere/ocean system, eventually to include a wave model.

March 30, 2009 | In March, NCAR announced that Peter Backlund was selected as the first director of the organization’s new Integrated Science Program (ISP). Peter, whose previous position as director of research relations for NCAR is being merged with the new appointment, began his new role on March 23.

"I am very excited to be appointed director of ISP,” Peter says. “I look forward to playing a more direct role in sustaining and promoting NCAR science."

 ISP was created in January to promote scientific goals that are dependent on an integrated approach across NCAR’s laboratories and disciplines. The program incorporates TIIMES and ISSE and partners with ASP. With the formation of ISP and Peter’s appointment, the managerial positions of ISSE director and TIIMES director are now combined into one office under one director.

An interdivisional search committee selected Peter for the position. “Peter brings a wealth of talent in planning, management, and partnership that will serve ISP and NCAR well,” says Eric Barron, NCAR director, describing him as a strong supporter of integrated and interdisciplinary science programs.

March 19, 2009 | Project BudBurst, in which thousands of volunteers nationwide track climate change by recording the timing of flowering, leafing, and other plant life cycle events, has launched its 2009 field campaign. Now in its second full year, the project is successfully amassing observations from students, gardeners, and citizen-scientists in every state to give researchers a detailed picture of how plants respond to changes in the environment.

A number of new features and enhancements have been added to the project website this year, says Kirsten Meymaris (EO). These include new phenophase field guides, updated plant identification guides, classroom resources, real time mapping with Google Maps, and photosharing.

 Participants select one or more plants (wildflowers, trees, shrubs, grasses, and even some weeds) to observe, and begin checking them at least a week prior to the average dates of various phenophases, such as first flower and first leaf. Participants observe their plants throughout the growing season and continue to report selected phenophases. This year, when participants submit their records online, they can view live maps of phenological events across the United States.

 Project BudBurst is a collaboration between EO, the Chicago Botanic Garden, and the University of Montana, and is hosted on the Windows to the Universe website.