As our understanding of the world's weather and climate patterns improves and computers become ever more powerful, researchers are using tools to track, understand and predict weather and climate patterns that affect societies worldwide. Brief overviews of two of the most powerful of these tools, the Advanced Research WRF (ARW) and the Community Climate System Model (CCSM), will be given, along with a presentation on how these tools are being combined to create a Nested Regional Climate Model (NRCM).

We will provide an overview of the Earth Observing Laboratory emphasizing our facilities and how young faculty/scientists can engage in our field campaigns and how they can request our facilities.

CISL, Unidata, GIS and COSMIC presentations and demonstrations

In the first hour of this session each of the four programs listed below will present a brief overview of its activities; in the next hour each program will hold a demonstration in the rooms listed below. You may attend all program overviews, however, please only select one demonstration from the list below:

10:40 - 11:30am
demo in FL
FL2, Rm. 1003

CISL's mission is to support and advance the geosciences with world-class computing, data management and research in mathematics and computational science.  As part of this mission, CISL provides tools to enable researchers to easily and effectively utilize community resources.  This presentation will give an overview and demonstration of the following tools:  Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF); Earth System Grid (ESG); Community Data Portal (CDP); NCAR Command Language (NCL); the Visualization and Analysis Platform for Ocean, Atmosphere, and Solar Researchers (VAPOR); the Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART); and the Geophysical and Astrophysical Spectral element Adaptive Refinement (GASpAR) code.

10:40 - 11:30am
demo in FL
FL Auditorium

The Unidata Program, provides a range of data services, tools, and support to a diverse community of academic institutions.  Using the Internet Data Distribution system and the Local Data Manager, Unidata distributes geoscience data in near-real-time to over 160 institutions world wide.  Unidata also develops, maintains, and supports a variety of software packages to access, process, manage, analyze and visualization geoscience data: netCDF, GEMPAK, McIDAS, the Integrated Data Viewer, and the Local Data Manager.

In this tour, an overview of the Unidata program, tools and services will be provided, followed by a hands-on demonstration of some of its analysis and visualization applications.

10:40 - 11:30am
demo in FL3, Rm. 1067

The main goal of the GIS Initiative is to promote and support the use of GIS as both an analysis and an infrastructure tool in atmospheric research and to address broader issues of spatial knowledge sharing. The tour will  provide an overview of the GIS Initiative activities, focusing on recent  developments and opportunities for collaborations in various aspects of integration of GIS and atmospheric sciences. Brief presentation will be followed by a demonstration on how to bring weather and climate data into a GIS for analysis and integration with other environmental and socio-economic information.

10:40 - 11:30am
demo in FL
FL2, Rm. 3107

The COSMIC program is pioneering a new atmospheric sensing technique, called radio occultation. To demonstrate the value of this technique for global weather prediction, climate analysis, and ionospheric research six small satellites were launched in April 2006. The satellites, payloads and processing center are working well and are generating data for the science and operational communities. We will describe the mission followed by a demonstration on how data can be retrieved and studied in real-time or for post-processing using our on-line data mining tools.

9:30 and 10:30 am

The FL0 tour will involve three experimental groups and one satellite group in the Atmospheric Chemistry Division ACD. The first 20 minutes of the tour will include Alex Guenther's emissions experiments using plants grown in the FL0 Greenhouse and Alex and Jim Smith's aerosol growth chamber used to quantify the impact of plant emissions on aerosol formation and composition. The next 20 minutes will be a demonstration by John Gille's group of the HIRDLS Engineering model, which is a replica of the HIRDLS instrument currently on the AURA satellite.  The Engineering model is used to test software and procedures before uploading to the HIRDLS instrument on the satellite. For the final 20 minutes Geoff Tyndall and John Orlando will give a tour of the chemical kinetics laboratory and explain the atmospheric chemical reactions they are currently studying.

FL0, Conference Room 2512

9:30 - 11:30 am

Research Applications Lab (RAL)

RAL staff will provide highlights of recent work done in the 1) National Security Applications Program (NSAP) focused on the Global Climatological Analysis Tool (GCAT), for calculation of gridded mesoscale to urban-scale climatology, and a multi-scale, operational, data-assimilation and forecasting system for Washington, D.C., providing weather products for the mesoscale, city scale, neighborhood scale, and building scale, 2) Weather Systems and Assessment Program (WSAP) focused on advanced object-oriented techniques for verifying fine-scale models from a user-relevant perspective, and 3) Hydrometeorology Applications Program (HAP) focused on the new Short Term Explicit Prediction of convective storms and the recent REFRACTT field experiment.

The ASP provides several different opportunities for faculty at Universities to develop meaningful and lifelong collaborations between themselves and the NCAR scientific staff. Our tour will highlight some of these opportunities including our Junior Faculty Forum, Graduate Student Visitor Program, Faculty Fellowship Program, Summer Colloquia, and the Postdoctoral Fellowships program.

The NCAR Early Career Scientist Assembly (ECSA) provides a forum to discuss career development topics and to host scientific leaders in the fields of research related to NCAR. The ECSA is composed of Scientists I/II, Project Scientists I/II, Associate Scientists, and Postdoctoral Scientists.

The ECSA presentation will focus on the role it plays in the institution, its specific needs, various activities it sponsors, and will explore shared interests with the early career faculty visitors.

The Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training (COMET®) was created to promote a better understanding of mesoscale meteorology and to maximize the benefits of new weather technologies in the weather forecasting community. Today, the program does this primarily through the production of web-based computer-aided learning modules. Some 400 hours of interactive multi-media training is now available and about 50 hours are added to the site each year. All these materials are available free to faculty via the website http://www.meted.ucar.edu.

Learn about the resources, tools, and services of the National Science Digital Library with an emphasis on the benefits of the library to early career faculty in their teaching and research.

Join us to learn about educational opportunities you can share with undergraduate students. The NCAR Undergraduate Leadership Workshop seeks to interest students in pursuing graduate studies in the atmospheric and related fields. SOARS, Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science, is an undergraduate-to-graduate bridge program designed to broaden participation in our sciences by students from groups that are historically under-represented in the sciences.