2006 Outstanding Accomplishment Awards (OAA)

The December 8 all-staff party at CG1, sponsored by the Employee Activities Committee, continued the tradition of ringing in the holidays while recognizing the outstanding work of employees.

Nominations and winners:
1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999 • 2000 • 2001 • 2002 • 2003 • 2004 • 2005 • 2006 • 2007 • 2008

All Award Winners, 1967–present

Scientific and Technical Advancement Award

ACD's John Gille, David Edwards, Merritt Deeter, Dan Ziskin, Barb Tunison, Dan Packman, Gene Francis, Juying Warner, Jean-Francois Lamarque, Valery Yudin, Boris Khattatov, Louisa Emmons, Shu-peng (Ben) Ho, Gabriele Pfister, Jean-Luc Attie, Debbie Mao, Jarmei Chen, Cheryl Craig and Charles Cavanaugh of the MOPITT (Measurement Of Pollution In The Troposphere) team. 

The MOPITT team is recognized for its outstanding leadership, from the conception of the project through instrument design, algorithm development, and operational data processing to the resulting significant scientific analysis.  The MOPITT instrument was placed on the Terra satellite in late 1999 to measure carbon monoxide.  Since that time, the MOPITT team has produced over six years of validated carbon monoxide global measurements for use by the international scientific community.

Outstanding Publication Award

Jeffrey T. Kiehl and Christine A. Shields for:

Kiehl, J.T. and C.A. Shields, 2005:  Climate simulation of the latest Permian:  Implications for mass extinction.  Geology, 33, 757-760.0.

The jury felt that this work and the resulting publication have “turned heads” far beyond the usual range.  Around 251 million years ago, approximately 95 percent of all marine life and 70 percent of life on land died off in a relatively short time of a few thousand years.  Numerous diverse causes for the extinction have been proposed including, but not limited to, an asteroid impact, a large build up of carbon dioxide in the oceans, and massive volcanic explosions that led to cooling. 

Using the fully coupled Community Climate System Model, Kiehl and Shields produced a result that matches the geological evidence.  By doing so, they demonstrated the importance of ocean circulation to life on Earth and the importance of coupled ocean-atmosphere modeling, and they made a tremendous step forward in deep-time research.

Education and Outreach Award

Linda Carbone (EO), Tim Barnes (EO), William Bradley (ACD), Janine Goldstein (EOL), Dolores Kiessling (COMET), Dennis Ward (EO) and Jeff Weber (Unidata) for hosting Super Science Saturday. 

For the past ten years every October, UCAR has welcomed thousands of children and their families to Super Science Saturday, an event that supports UCAR’s mission to educate the public about the atmospheric and related sciences.  During the event, participants experience many innovative and fun hands-on science activities as well as the original, captivating, and dramatic science demonstrations in the wizards’ shows.  The impact of Super Science Saturday on the community and future scientists is clearly evident by participants’ enthusiastic feedback and the ever-increasing attendance that surpassed 4,000 this year.

Mentoring Award

William "Al" Cooper (EOL). From 1996-2005, Al was director of the Advanced Study Program (ASP), where he mentored a long stream of postdoctoral fellows who are still deeply indebted to him.  Al is a master at helping graduate students orchestrate smooth transitions to mature scientists. Al was also the driving force behind the creation of NCAR’s Thompson Lecture Series and the Junior Faculty Forum on Future Scientific Directions. 

2006 (OAA) Administrative Achievement Award

No nominations were received in this category.

2006 Distinguished Achievement Award

No nominations were received in this category.

Other Nominees

Scientific and Technical Advancement Award

Krista Laursen, Dick Friesen, Pat Munson, Geoff Cheeseman, Jennifer Oxelson, Carla Hassler (all in the former HIAPER Project Office), Mike Spowart, Gordon Maclean, Grant Gray, John Wasinger, Chris Webster, Gary Granger, Charlie Martin, Chris Burghart, Susan Stringer, Kurt Zrubek, John Cowan, Bill Irwin, George Nicoll, Allen Schanot, David Rogers, Jorgen Jensen, Pavel Romashkin, Jack Fox, Steve Rauenbuehler, Mark Lord, Henry Boynton, Ed Ringleman, Bob Olson, Bob Maxson, Brent Kidd, Bob Beasley, Kip Eagan, and Gerry Albright (all in EOL) for the acquisition, modification, and initial instrumentation of HIAPER.  The team designed and installed the basic infrastructure needed to support research projects, and its efforts have produced a platform that should serve the atmospheric sciences community for decades.

Unidata's John Caron, Ed Hartnett and Russ Rew for the developments and resulting impacts of software engineering work in advancing netCDF.  NetCDF has become a de facto standard that is the basis of innovative and powerful information technologies, tools, and services.

COSMIC's Bill Kuo, Chris Rocken, Dave Ector, Sergey Sokolovskiy, Stig Syndergaard, Bill Schreiner, Doug Hunt, Tae-Kwon Wee, Lidia Curcurull, James Johnson, Karl Hudnut, and Maggie Sleziak-Sallee for the COSMIC mission.  In the three months following the mission, important data has already been provided to the broad scientific community, and the COSMIC team played a critical role in making the important mission a reality.

RAL's Dave Albo, Ben Balsley, Kirk Clawson, Jeff Copeland, Larry Cornman, Rod Frehlich, David Hahn, Jason Knievel (MMM), Yubao Liu, Shane Mayor (EOL), Bruce Morley (EOL), Niles Oien, Michael Raines, Bob Sharman, Rong Sheu, Scott Spuler (EOL), Jenny Sun, Scott Swerdlin, Tom Warner, Jeff Weil (CIRES), and Stephen Dowdy for designing, building, and implementing a building protection system for the Pentagon.  This system detects hazardous substances released into the atmosphere and forecasts their transport and dispersion.  The group made a number of significant scientific and technical advances in the process.

HAO's Greg Card, Clarke Chambellan, David Elmore, Alice Lecinski, Ron Lull, Stan Solomon, Kim Streander, and Qian Wu for their work on the Fabry-Perot Interferometer (FPI) to support ground-based observations at the NSF Polar Cap Observatory through measurements of mesospheric and thermosphere winds at multiple wavelengths and altitudes.  The instrument has been operated for three years, and the data from it has been submitted to the CEDAR database for community use.

William Randel (ACD), F. Wu (ACD), S.J. Oltmans, K. Rosenlof and G. Nedoluha for:

Randel, W.J., F. Wu, S.J. Oltmans, K. Rosenlof and G. Nedoluha, 2004:  Interannual changes in the stratospheric water vapor and correlations with tropical tropopause temperatures.  J. Atmos. Sci., 61, 2133-2148.

Junhong Wang (EOL), Harold L. Cole (EOL), David J. Carlson, Erik R. Miller, Kathryn Beierle, Ari Paukkunen and Tapani K. Laine for:

Junhong Wang, Harold L. Cole, David J. Carlson, Erik R. Miller, Kathryn Beierle, Ari Paukkunen and Tapani K. Laine, 2002:  Corrections of humidity measurement errors from the Vaisala RS80 radiosonde – Application to TOGA COARE data.  Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 19, 981-1002.

Chris Snyder (MMM) and Fuqing Zhang (MMM) for:

Snyder, C. and F. Zhang, 2003:  Assimilation of simulated Doppler radar observations with an ensemble Kalman filter.  Mon. Wea. Rev., 131, 1663-1677.

Thomas T. Warner (RAL) for:

Warner, T, 2004:  Desert Meteorology, Cambridge University Press, 595 pp.

Yuhong Fan (HAO) and Sarah Gibson (HAO) for:

Fan, Y. and S. E. Gibson, 2004:  Numerical simulations of three-dimensional coronal magnetic fields resulting from the emergence of twisted magnetic flux tubes.  The Astrophysical Journal, 609, 1123-1133.

Education and Outreach

EOL's Alan Fried, Dirk Richter, and Jim Walega, along with Randy Albrandt, Brenton Burnett, and Jason Christiansen for developing a meaningful Web-based and freely accessible curriculum that bridges the divide between current science research and high school science content, while also promoting greater opportunities for photonics curricula in high school classrooms.

Michael (Mickey) Glantz (CCB) for developing, publishing, and supporting the original notion of "Climate Affairs" which is increasing awareness worldwide of the subtle, as well as obvious, impacts of climate on human societies.  Climate affairs is a way to educate the educators at universities and colleges and train the trainers of professionals in the workforce.

Eve Gruntfest (ISSE), Julie Demuth (ISSE), Jeff Lazo (RAL), Rebecca Morss (MMM), Sheldon Drobot, Mary Hayden (ISSE), Matt Kelsch (COMET), and Olga Wilhelmi (ISSE) for Weather and Society * Integrated Studies (WAS*IS), an innovative series of workshops, education and outreach activities, and community building efforts aimed at improving the integration of weather and social science.  Its goal is to empower practitioners, researchers, and stakeholders in all sectors of the weather enterprise to forge new relationships and to develop and use new tools for more effective socio-economic applications and evaluations of weather products.