DAVE CARLSON IS NEW ATD DIRECTOR

As TOGA COARE winds down, a scientist who helped organize and 
lead it is moving on to a new and rather fitting challenge.  Dave 
Carlson - who has served as director of UCAR's Tropical Ocean and 
Global Atmosphere Program (TOGA) Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere 
Response Experiment (COARE) International Project Office since 1991 
- becomes the new director of NCAR's Atmospheric Technology 
Division on 1 July.  He succeeds Rit Carbone, who has directed ATD 
since 1989 (see sidebar).  

TOGA COARE was a massive multinational field program focused 
on the ocean-atmosphere interactions in the tropical western Pacific.  
A better understanding of these interactions is critical to resolving 
questions about how the ocean and atmosphere interact in a global 
system, determining the feasibility of predicting regional climate 
variations, and assessing long-term climate change.  Dave 
coordinated and led the planning for COARE and directed operations 
during the intensive observing period from November 1992 to 
February 1993.  Now the project is in its final, data-management 
phase, and that effort will continue through 1996 under data manager 
Richard Chinman.  Carlson says he also will continue to be on call for 
COARE.

That experience with TOGA COARE, says Dave, was both a 
qualification and an inducement for taking the ATD director's job.  
"In COARE, which was probably the biggest use of ATD people and 
facilities ever, I got to know the people face to face.  I saw what they 
do, hands on, on a day-to-day basis and got to know very broadly the 
ATD facilities, because most of them were used in that project.  I 
don't need to be introduced to what ATD does and how well they do 
it, because I've been the beneficiary of it." 

Dave came to UCAR from what he now thinks of as a relatively 
quiet, "previous life" as an oceanography professor at Oregon State 
University.  To go from the steady, continuing responsibility of a 
university professor to running TOGA COARE, he says, was a "burst 
of responsibility, and not just for me, but for UCAR.  What impressed 
me was how UCAR responded to that burst, how people stepped up 
and took responsibility, worked long hours . . . that was very 
encouraging. I hear constantly about how TOGA COARE stressed the 
[UCAR] system in all its components: finance, contracts, media 
relations, facilities, human resources.  The system responded 
extremely well to that stress, especially ATD.  It would be premature 
to declare the data collection a success, but in terms of operations, we 
can declare wild success.  It's no surprise that I would want to stay 
with such an organization." 

What Dave feels he brings to the job of ATD director is a proven 
ability to work with the university community and the funding 
agencies simultaneously.  "We did that successfully for TOGA 
COARE and of course ATD does it as part of its existence.  We'll 
continue that and improve on it, especially the way we work with the 
university community.  As for specific technical plans - platforms, etc. 
- the division is in good shape.  I foresee no immediate technical 
changes or redirection; we'll focus on the community relations 
effort." He also realizes that he'll be undergoing a kind of identity 
change.  "I'm now identified professionally with TOGA COARE.  
People will need to get to know me in this new capacity."

A specialist in dynamics and microchemistry of the ocean surface layer, Dave 
earned his Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Maine and did 
postdoctoral work at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.  --
Louise Carroll