Welcome to the website for information on, and registration for the UCAR 2000 Annual Meeting Forum!

Over this past year, we have marked the 40^th anniversary of UCAR and NCAR through a wide-variety of activities. One of the most important of these began a year ago at the October 1999 Annual Meeting Forum sessions when we considered the following question:

How should the universities and UCAR/NCAR, working in partnership with the rest of the atmospheric sciences community, evolve to meet the highest priority challenges and opportunities of the next several decades?

During the 1999 Forum, we drew on the findings from the 1998 BASC report--The Atmospheric Sciences Entering the Twenty-first Century--and the NSF Geosciences Beyond 2000 report--Understanding and Predicting Earth's Environment and Habitability--to set the framework for discussion of this question. A wide-reaching set of issues emerged.

• 1999 Forum follow-up web site

These issues formed the basis for a community survey, sent this past May to over 2000 members of the broad atmospheric and related sciences community.

• Community Survey Results

During this year's Forum, we plan to focus on how UCAR and the community can work together to address the following five key issues identified in the 1999 Forum and the community survey:

• Observational Facilities/Instrumentation/Field Program Support
• Computing Facilities/Community Models
• Data/Real-time and Archived Data-Data Sets, Data Streams
• Education and Training
• Recruiting Graduate Students into the atmospheric and related sciences

We will break-out into groups to discuss these areas. Community members and members of the University Relations Committee will chair the sessions and summarize what the survey indicated about these five areas. UCAR staff will make presentations on current UCAR activities in these areas and how UCAR plans to respond to the community comments. We will solicit feedback on the UCAR plans and incorporate this feedback into UCAR planning activities, including preparation of a new NCAR strategic plan and a UCAR strategic plan for education and outreach. So your participation in the breakout sessions is important!

Please use the site below to register by 3 October. We ask that you submit a request for your first and second choice of breakout sessions—we will do our best to give you your first choice.

• 2000 Forum Registration

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact Susan Friberg (friberg@ucar.edu)