Dear Colleagues,

It is with pleasure that I present the Fiscal Year 1999 Annual Scientific Report of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. FY 1999 represents my last, full fiscal year as Director of NCAR, as I have announced my decision to step down early in calendar year 2000. For this report, I have prepared a brief overview of the activities and accomplishments of NCAR's scientists during this, my tenth year, as Director. I hope that you will find this summary and the entire website informative as well as indicative of the outstanding work done at our Center over the past 12 months.

Fundamental Research

Fundamental research provides the foundation for understanding the physical, dynamical, chemical and biological mechanisms that govern atmospheric and related processes. NCAR's base program is sufficiently broad and flexible to respond to research opportunities and enable discovery. In 1999, five areas of emphasis were pursued:

Precipitation Physics Focussing on two themes, testing theories of how precipitation forms through warm-rain processes and, determining how ice forms and grows to precipitation, NCAR will improve our representations of precipitation in weather and climate models. This year saw an emphasis on the microphysics of ice processes.

Natural variability of the Earth System: It is well known that the earth's physical climate system, coupled atmosphere, ocean, sea ice and land surface is variable on a variety of time scales from seasonal to centennial. This is the result of changes in ocean and atmosphere circulations and their interactions with sea ice and land surface moisture. To achieve a better understanding of this variability NCAR undertook analysis of physical observations and improvements to our climate system model.

Atmospheric Kinetics and Photochemistry: Studies undertaken this year include determination of the rate coefficients and products of atmospheric chemical reactions and reactions of inorganic chlorine and bromine compounds to quantify impacts of their chemistry on ozone levels in the stratosphere and the marine boundary layer. The study of aerosols, which are a key factor in the Earth's climate system, was another continuing area of emphasis.

Solar Magnetism: Understanding the structure and behavior of the solar magnetic field is a scientific prerequisite for developing reliable forecasts of variations in solar output that cause changes in our terrestrial and space environments. Two main research thrusts at NCAR include studies of the magnetic sun and its intrinsic variability and a solar magnetism initiative to construct a full understanding of the solar magnetism from the deep solar interior through the solar corona.

Dynamical and Turbulent Systems: NCAR has maintained an active program in fundamental geophysical turbulence research and astrophysical fluid dynamics. Current research includes investigations into Clear Air turbulence and how to parameterize physics at small scales in weather and climate models.

Understanding and Predicting the Earth System

Predicting Weather on short time and space scales: NCAR continued its activities in the focused science program of the US Weather Research Program. To better coordinate the scientific foci of the USWRP with the NSF Grants program and other agency-sponsored activities, NCAR modified its funding cycle to coordinate the two, two-year project cycles. NCAR also received special funding for from NSF to conduct USWRP-related activities in ESIG.

Separating natural variability and anthropogenic climate change: In addition to natural variability, climate can change due to human activity. Separating these two is an important scientific problem with major societal and economic implications. Studies aimed at this problem included simulations of the climate of the 20th century with the Climate System Model (CSM), research into tropical ocean seasonal-to-interannual variability, and the impact of mesoscale and microscale systems on larger scale systems.

Atmospheric chemistry and air quality: Changes in emissions of chemicals associated with evolving land use and industrial development are becoming major causes of global changes in the Earth system. NCAR has planned two major research programs for deployment in FY2000 to address tropospheric ozone production (TOPSE) and the physical processes that produce and control urban pollutants (MIRAGE). Both TOPSE and MIRAGE will involve significant participation of university researchers.

Solar-terrestrial coupling with an emphasis on the upper atmosphere: Two activities were initiated to study the coupled earth system and its response to the variable sun and to better understand solar-induced space weather. These investigations will eventually provide a better understanding of solar emissions, enabling the coupling of the TIME-GCM model with the Climate System model.

Advanced Scientific Facilities

Computing and data handling facilities: The Scientific Computing Division provides high performance computing facilities to support the NCAR scientific program and the supercomputing needs of the community. The facilities include a substantial infrastructure of computer servers, networking, visualization, data communications and user services to support the development and execution of large, long-running models and the manipulation, analysis and archiving of extremely large datasets. Current facilities include the Climate Simulation Laboratory, a national, special use, dedicated computing facility for climate system modeling. The CSL is a multi-agency, USGCRP facility. A the end of the fiscal year, SCD acquired a new distributed shared memory supercomputer, named blackforest, which represents the culmination of a process of identifying the best next-generation supercomputing system for NCAR.

Atmospheric observing systems: NCAR develops and operates observing facilities and provides data manipulation and analysis tools to researches throughout the university community. The acquisition of a High-Performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research) HIAPER aircraft proceeded on target with the approval of the Systems Acquisition and Integration plan by NSF> Preparations for an FY2001 airframe contract remain on schedule.

Solar observing systems: Advances in solar observing systems availaable to the community were made with the continuation of the Mauna Loa Observatory observations made with the Precision Solar Photometric Telescope. Other facilities currently in use include the Advanced Coronal Observing System (ACOS) comprised of three instruments, the Mark IV Solar white light coronagraph, the March III coronagraph and the Chromospheric Helium I Imaging Photometer.

Community models, datasets and networking: NCAR develops and supports several complex models, many of which are used broadly by the community. Services that may be provided to users include cooperative research runs on NCAR computers, transfer of code to universities for research by individuals or groups outside of NCAR, tutorials, workshops, user groups and collaboration on evaluation and improvments. Current models include the Climate System Model (CSM), Model of Ozone and Related Species in the Troposphere (MOZART) and the Mesoscale Model Version 5 (MM5)

NCAR provides cost-effective local area network capability for UCAR and NCAR users, metropolitan area networking to support work between campuses and other local users and wide area networking that meets the research community's needs for national and international connectivity. This year also saw the development and construction of the Boulder Research and Administrative Network (BRAN), a local fiber-optic network to connect some of Boulder's national labs with the University of Colorado and City of Boulder.

NCAR also makes available to the university research community a wide variety of datasets from model runs, field programs and special activities such as the NCEP data reanalysis project.

Human Dimensions and Societal Impacts

NCAR's research program on human dimensions promotes the use of atmospheric science information in service to society and is designed to improve understanding of the complex interactions among human societies, natural resource systems, and atmospheric processes. The Environmental and Societal Impact Group is the institutional foci for much of this research.

Education and Training

NCAR places a very high priority on education and training activities through specific science and facility programs, as well as through individual contributions of our staff. Extensive visitor programs exist in each NCAR division, and the Advanced Study Program recruits and appoints approximately 20 postdoctoral fellows each year.