.

updates on people, places and activities

Climate change adaptation on October agenda

September 24, 2008 | Center Green will play host to more than 100 university faculty during the week of October 13–17 for the 2008 UCAR Annual Meetings. Attendees include representatives from UCAR members and affiliates, members of the UCAR Board of Trustees and the President’s Advisory Committee on University Relations (PACUR), early career faculty guests, and UCAR/NCAR management. In addition, this year the American Meteorological Society and American Geophysical Union will sponsor the biennial meeting of heads and chairs from university departments and programs in atmospheric and related sciences. This year’s Members’ Meeting Forum focuses on the UCAR community’s role in climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Supercomputing Center one step closer

September 24, 2008 | On September 5, NCAR director Eric Barron reported that NSF has given a green light to proceed with the initial design phase of the NCAR Supercomputing Center, to be located outside Cheyenne. NCAR’s next step is to issue a request for architecture and engineering services, followed by a request for design proposals. NSF will draw up a formal process for review and approval of the development during its major phases. UCAR/NCAR, NSF, and Wyoming partners will work together to finalize business plans, milestones, and timelines within the framework NSF establishes.

NCAR Library develops plans for institutional repository and Mesa Lab library remodel

October 30, 2008 | The NCAR Library is working to develop an online institutional repository for collecting, preserving, and disseminating UCAR/NCAR’s research in digital form. Library director Mary Marlino says that the proposed repository has two critical functions: access and preservation. It will make the organization’s scholarship and data more widely available, and ensure a new level of digital preservation. The Library is working with individuals and groups across the organization to develop a plan for the repository that it hopes to have complete by January. The next step will be formulating policies and procedures to ensure capture of important institutional publications, data, and history.

The Library is also conducting a much-needed feasibility study for the remodel of the Mesa Lab library. Mary is soliciting input from focus groups of scientists, administrators, and other staff on how to physically adapt the library space to better foster scientific collaborations and support NCAR’s mission of scientific discovery. She expects the feasibility study, due out in February, to result in a high-level design and options for pricing. Next steps will then include working closely with NSF on budget issues related to the remodel.

Stargazing for science

November 11, 2008 | Schoolchildren, families, and citizen scientists around the world gazed skyward after dark from October 20 to November 3 as part of the second Great World Wide Star Count. Their objective was to find specific constellations and then share their observations online. The data they collect helps scientists map light pollution globally, while educating participants about the stars. Approximately 12,471 individuals participated in the count this year, submitting 3,378 observations from all 50 U.S. states and 60 different countries.

The event, which was free and open to anyone, was organized by EO’s Windows to the Universe project in conjunction with planetariums and scientific societies across the country and abroad.

UCAR will use the observations to generate maps of star visibility across the United States and around the world. Last year’s results showed, as one might expect, a strong correlation between development and a lack of night sky visibility.

CISL installs massive digital storage library

November 12, 2008 | In November, CISL announced the arrival of AMSTAR (Augmentation of the Mass Storage Tape Archive Resources). This new digital storage library gives NCAR five times its current storage capacity and enables scientists to conduct increasingly sophisticated computer studies of Earth’s climate.

AMSTAR was designed by Sun Microsystems and is based on the Sun StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library. It gives NCAR up to 30 petabytes of storage capacity, in addition to achieving higher speeds without increasing power requirements. (A petabyte, which is one million gigabytes, is the equivalent of 223,101 DVDs or more than 8,730 iPod Classics.) The bulk of its holdings will be data generated by global climate simulations, weather models, and other Earth system models that run on supercomputers.

The capacity and design of the Sun Microsystems system will allow CISL to incorporate AMSTAR into its Mass Storage System without having to rewrite any code. The Mass Storage System, which is one of the largest archives in the world dedicated to geoscience research, has reached its capacity of six petabytes, less than six years after crossing the one-petabyte mark.

Senior scientists win prestigious AMS award

October 28, 2008 | The American Meteorological Society is honoring Warren Washington and Jerry Meehl (ESSL/CGD) with the 2009 Jule G. Charney Award for their “outstanding collaborative contributions to modeling climate and its response to anthropogenic and natural forcings.” The award will be presented in Phoenix next January at the AMS Annual Meeting.

The Jule G. Charney Award recognizes highly significant research or development achievement in the atmospheric or hydrologic sciences. It is named in honor of Jule Charney, who played a major role in establishing the theoretical framework on which numerical weather prediction is based. Past NCAR winners include Rick Anthes (1987), Robert Dickinson (1988), Kevin Trenberth (2000), Rol Madden (2001), and Rich Rotunno (2004).

Warren, who heads CGD’s Climate Research Section, is an internationally recognized expert on atmospheric science and climate research who specializes in computer modeling of Earth's climate. Jerry is an expert on tropical climate variability and future climate change. Both scientists contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

Event planning made easy

September 24, 2008 | In late August, Meeting Maker and Room Reservations were combined by IT into a new system called Room and Resource Scheduler (RRS). The new system offers one-stop shopping for booking conference rooms and is especially efficient for large events. Users who log into RRS can order catering, multimedia services, and other setup options in addition to booking rooms. Rooms can still be booked through Meeting Maker; reservations made through Meeting Maker show up in RRS and vice versa. All available rooms can now be viewed in both applications.

Syndicate content
.