Introduction

UCAR at 40 Who We Are •Introduction One Planet, One Atmosphere Between Sun and Earth Measuring and Modeling When Weather Matters Most Spreading the Word Knowledge for All Looking toward the Future UCAR at a Glance List of acronyms

Anniversaries—especially ones that occur at the ends or beginnings of decades, centuries, or millennia—typically cause people to reflect on the past and look forward to the future. The 40^thanniversary of UCAR and NCAR is no exception. This year we have been celebrating the achievements of our unique partnership with atmospheric scientists around the world, as well as looking forward. This document, UCAR at 40, reviews highlights of our work with the atmospheric research community. It focuses on the 15 years since a similar document, UCAR at 25 (accessible on the World Wide Web) was published. Many of the achievements herein were accomplished with the leadership of Robert Serafin, who directed NCAR from 1989 to 2000. NCAR and the UCAR Office of Programs (UOP, created in 1992) have grown and broadened in many ways in their scientific and educational activities and their service to the universities and to society. These changes are consistent with UCAR's strategic outlook, UCAR 2001, published in 1992 after much discussion with the community. In the section "UCAR at a Glance" are the six goals outlined in UCAR 2001.

What have we learned and created in the past 15 years? A few examples:

• The greatest change in our scientific emphasis has been the shift toward interdisciplinary science directed at understanding Earth as a system. In 1985, conceptualizing for what would become the multiagency U.S. Global Change Research Program had just begun. Today the USGCRP carries out a large share of the nation's research on climate change and has advanced knowledge across the entire spectrum of Earth system science. As but one example, we now have a much better understanding of the interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere, including such phenomena as El Niño, La Niña, and the North Atlantic Oscillation. This understanding has led to the ability to predict, with some skill, temperature and precipitation anomalies over certain regions of the Earth several months to a year in advance. NCAR and UOP have played a significant role in all stages of the USGCRP, including planning, field program support, computing, and research taking place at NCAR and the universities.

• In 1985 our flagship community climate model was primarily a model of atmospheric dynamics alone. Today the NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM) includes atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land-surface components. These are linked so that climate simulations of even 100 years or more are free of the climate "drift" problem that plagued previous models. The CCSM has now mapped the climate of the 20th century and projected the climate of the next 100 years. NCAR, with Pennsylvania State University, has also developed a popular model of mesoscale weather features. The PSU/NCAR mesoscale model is used by over 600 scientists worldwide to simulate thunderstorms and other small-scale hazards.

• Microbursts were a newly discovered phenomenon in the 1980s, when NCAR launched a program to help detect and warn for wind shear at the nation's airports. Now air traffic at most major U.S. cities is protected from wind shear by an elaborate warning system. NCAR is testing techniques to help reduce the impact of thunderstorms, snowstorms, icing, and turbulence on air travel.

• Fifteen years ago, El Niño was of interest mainly to scientists, and very little was known about La Niña. Today, as a result of the Tropical Oceans–Global Atmosphere program and related research, these periodic warmings and coolings of the tropical Pacific are monitored with data from satellites and buoys, and their development is predicted months in advance. With collaborators elsewhere, NCAR scientists have analyzed the effects of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation on global climate and organized country-by-country studies of major ENSO impacts. NCAR has also facilitated international meetings and workshops to help governments minimize the impact of El Niño and La Niña on their economies and on the lives of their citizens.

• In 1985, NCAR's Scientific Computing Division (SCD) had just two supercomputers, each of them CRAY-1As. By 2000, SCD had acquired a powerful 167-node IBM cluster while maintaining several Cray machines. The total sustained capacity at SCD is now over 70 gigaflops (billions of floating-point operations per second), more than a thousandfold increase over 1985. This advance has allowed enormous improvements in NCAR's climate modeling and provided far more capacity for university users.

• Most of the nation relied on conventional weather radar in 1985 to monitor tornadoes and other severe weather. Now the National Weather Service has completed a national network of Doppler radars and warning quality has improved for many weather hazards. NCAR helped develop and test the prototype radar for this network. Tests are now under way for a possible upgrade, using a sophisticated, transportable Doppler radar, developed at NCAR, with polarized signals that allow hail to be easily discerned from rain.

• Relatively little was known in 1985 about what part of the increase in property damage from weather hazards could be attributed to societal factors. Since then, political and social scientists at NCAR, working in tandem with physical scientists, have found that population, economic growth, and poorly designed government policies are primary factors behind the enormous increase in property damage related to hurricanes and floods.

• In 1985, there was no practical way to investigate whether there might be solar systems with planets similar to ours. In 1999, as an outgrowth of its helioseismology studies, NCAR teamed with several universities and research centers to verify the existence of multiple planets revolving around a Sun-like star. The emerging science of helioseismology also has shown how the Sun's rotation rate varies by latitude and depth beneath the surface.

• Our attention to education has increased and broadened: we are now helping to educate K-12 students and teachers, train operational meteorologists, and increase the human diversity in the atmospheric and related sciences. UOP programs such as Unidata and the Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training have helped teach and train many hundreds of university students and operational meteorologists. Since 1991, LEARN (Laboratory Experience in Atmospheric Research at NCAR) has reached over 2,000 middle school teachers who reach nearly 200,000 students a year. The SOARS (Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science) program, initiated in 1995, has already introduced a diverse group of more than 50 university students to atmospheric research.

• As our understanding of climate change and weather impacts has grown, we have increasingly recognized the need to communicate with the public and with policy makers. UCAR hosts over 70,000 people of all ages each year at the Mesa Laboratory Visitor Center. We involve colleagues in communicating with Congress and arrange for testimony and panels in Washington, D.C., on important weather and climate topics.

• UCAR is uniquely suited to nurture partnerships among various elements in the atmospheric science community. Several of UOP's programs are expressly designed to serve the community at large. While the National Science Foundation remains the primary sponsor of UCAR, a wide variety of agencies now collaborate with UCAR and NCAR on many projects. The programs supported by these agencies build upon the basic science and technology advances supported by NSF and serve as an effective mechanism for transferring discoveries and knowledge into technologies and products of benefit to society.

After spotlighting the last 15 years, we close UCAR at 40 with a look into the future of the atmospheric and related sciences. Driven by advances in observational, computational, and information technologies, the changes and accomplishments over the coming decades are sure to be revolutionary.

Richard Anthes,
UCAR president

UCAR at 40 Who We Are •Introduction One Planet, One Atmosphere Between Sun and Earth Measuring and Modeling When Weather Matters Most Spreading the Word Knowledge for All Looking toward the Future UCAR at a Glance List of acronyms