News Briefs

Comings and goings

Renee McPherson, NOAA Relations Officer for the past year at NSSL, has returned to the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. Renee is replaced by Randy Peppler, CIMMS Associate Director, who will serve in the position for the next year. The NOAA Relations Officer works as a liaison between CIMMS and NOAA for CIMMS employees working at the various NOAA units linked to CIMMS, including NSSL. The NOAA Relations Officer is the first contact for CIMMS employees regarding any work-related issue.

J.J. Gourley, CIMMS, will be in France on a postdoctoral fellowship for the next year to work with MeteoFrance on radars that are being upgraded with dual-pol capabilities on a postdoctoral fellowship.

Dr. Tadashi Fujita is a visiting scientist from the Japanese Meteorological Agency who will be working on ensemble Kalman filters with Dave Stensrud, Lou Wicker and David Dowell.

Christelle Barthe, a Ph.D. student from the University of Toulouse in France, visited the lab for several months as she worked on modeling thunderstorm electrification with Ted Mansell, Conrad Ziegler, and Don MacGorman. Roel Linssen, a graduate student in Meteorology from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, will work with the NSSL polarimetric radar group as part of his internship. He will work to improve ice classification in the polarimetric Hydrometeor Classification Algorithm.

Awards

Denison University in Granville, Ohio, awarded its Alumni Citation to Jeff Kimpel, a Denison graduate. The award is given to Denison graduates who have achieved recognized leadership among their peers through outstanding contributions and services to professional, civic, or religious life of the nation or to the advancement of the University. Jeff was also recognized with the Regents Alumni Award from the University of Oklahoma for exceptional dedication and service to OU.

Kevin Kelleher was one of the recipients of the 2004 NOAA Technology Transfer award as part of a group that developed a national real-time radar data archival and Internet2 delivery system for university, government, and private sectors. CIMMS and contract employees Mark Benner and Karen Cooper also worked on this project.

The NWC REU program, led by Daphne Zaras (CIMMS) has been granted a Two-Year Extension for Special Creativity from the National Science Foundation. Under the extension, the program will attempt to increase opportunity for undergraduate research, explore how these programs are effective in helping students make career choices, and help participants network with each other and the broader scientific community.

The North American Monsoon Experiment

The North American Monsoon Experiment is a joint U.S. - Mexican program focused on improving monsoon season precipitation forecasts over the U.S. and Mexico. A high point of the 8-year project was the NAME 2004 Field Campaign held this past summer. Scientists had an unprecedented opportunity to collect extensive atmospheric, oceanic, and land-surface observations over northwest Mexico, the southwest U.S. and adjacent oceanic areas--the core region of the North American Monsoon.

Two of the four main projects within NAME involved the expertise of NSSL researcher Mike Douglas. Mike helped coordinate flights of NOAA's P-3 over the Gulf of California to look at the seasonal low-level jet. He also coordinated the second project which studied, through ship measurements, how the monsoon is influenced by the transport of warm water into the Gulf of California.

Mike's long-term mission is to develop an affordable observing system in Latin America. He actively gathers used theodolites, trains locals to record wind profile data, and continues to work to install rain gauges across the area. programs are effective in helping students make career choices, and help participants network with each other and the broader scientific community.