CIRA’s Strategic Plan is developed as a dynamic document, updated periodically and dependent on several documents to include: 1) CIRA Mission Statement and Vision; 2) Colorado State University and the Engineering College’s Strategic Plans; 3) Federal Sponsor strategic plans and other published guidance; 4) National and State priorities as reflected in their budgets and published interests.

This Strategic Plan will be updated as required to reflect advancement in technology and the sciences. The major revisions will be associated with the NOAA 5-year agreement process, as well as other major funding agency activities like the planning and budgeting cycles associated with major projects (DOD Center for Geosciences and CloudSat as examples). The next update of CIRA’s Strategic Plan will begin when CIRA receives the NOAA FRP associated with CIRA’s recompetition in FY ’08.

CIRA’s Strategic Plan focuses on the execution and improvement of its Mission and Vision by having the intelligence, infrastructure, and support which allow us to respond to opportunities as they arise. Our major research theme areas and the personnel, equipment, and data needed to perform these scientific endeavors are all underpinnings to the success of this Strategic Plan.

The following Strategies form the foundation of our Strategic Plan:

• Entrain skills beyond the meteorological disciplines in support of CIRA’s proposals and infrastructure development.
• Pursue more than one major funding entity to ensure CIRA’s long-term viability.
• Focus our research in designated theme areas to improve the efficiency of our research and maintain excellence in these areas. Changes in these theme areas will be made in close collaboration with our government sponsors and in light of the long-term research trends of CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Science.
• Exploit cutting-edge advances in engineering and computer science to develop cost-effective methods and techniques for data collection, analysis, and distribution.
• Facilitate transitional activity between pure and applied research and strive to develop applied research results that are both relevant to our government sponsors’ Missions and supportive of the CSU educational Mission.
• Assist the Nation through the application of our research in public policy and economic and societal impacts of weather and climate.
• Assist national and international weather and climate managers in their selection, exploitation, and optimization of satellite, aircraft, and ground sensors.
• Continue to partner with federal and state agencies and laboratories to assure that our federally funded research is both cost efficient and non-redundant at the national level.
• Work closely with our federal partners to assure that our research is not only relevant but also packaged to be readily transferable to either operational prototyping activities or can address their Mission technical/scientific shortfalls.
• Maintain employment career opportunities. Assure our scientific staff members have a promotion and career track. Implement and sustain matrix management at CIRA so employees can move from project to project as new projects are funded and old projects are terminated.
• Foster diversity through hiring and graduate student support.
• Enhance employee cultural competencies via diversity awareness training and other presentatinos.
• Provide high school and undergraduate employment opportunities as CIRA student hourlies. Provide consistent year-to-year opportunities to allow students to become excited about career opportunities in weather research.

In pursuit of our Goals, we have identified the following near- and longer-term Objectives in each of our core areas of research, infrastructure, and personnel.

Develop multi-sensor data analysis tools that will provide better understanding of climate than the current single sensor-based climate diagnostic algorithms. Exploit the satellite data record for climatic purposes. This includes improving methods of determining long-term sensor drift, biases, and view angle considerations. It also includes a better understanding of the climate record effects caused by satellite-to-satellite handoffs and the results of sensor engineering improvements, spectral response, and resolution changes. Improve data archive and delivery methods by research in computer database systems, translation tools, PDF summaries, and PCA to capture the information needed without storing all channels and all data flow. Continue to foster inter-disciplinary research (radiation, land-surface features, emissivity, drought/soil moisture, and carbon balance) with other CSU researchers to improve our understanding of the earth ecosystem for the benefit of national and state-level decision makers. Assist the Federal acquisition and R&D engineering process in the selection of satellite sensors that will improve our understanding of climate.

Continue data assimilation research that will allow forecasters to better exploit current and future satellite observations in the forecast process. Improve our understanding and accuracy in hurricane landfall and intensification forecasts. Improve forecast model physics parameterizations and initialization schemes to improve severe weather lead-times. Improve our ability to communicate weather information and warnings to the general public and improve the utility of weather information to various public constituencies.

Improve our ability to discriminate cloud phase and its impact on climate, radiation, forecasting, and precipitation. Improve the cloud physics parameterizations in current and future forecast models. Improve our ability to forecast cloud tops, bases, and dissipation rates.

Improve our understanding of hurricanes and tropical cyclones through an observational approach, and develop and test satellite-based analysis and forecasting techniques. Develop new products and techniques for volcanic ash and fire detection. Develop new and improved algorithms, techniques and display software for severe weather and now casting products derived from satellite-based data for application on display/analysis systems. Participate in the activities of the NOAA/NASA Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation. Continue development of regional cloud climatologies.

Improve our ability to detect aerosols, and specify bulk parameters such as optical depth and effective radius. Better understand the relationship between aerosol optical properties and water vapor content. Investigate alternate sensing methods such as polarimetry, use of various visible wavelengths, and phase function. Investigate analysis and forecasting capabilities for air quality and other regional environmental problems requiring coupled models. Continue to support econometric modeling for weather impacts analysis. Investigate optimum format and dissemination strategy for maximizing the impacts, uses, and values of NOAA/NWS forecasts and warnings to the general public.

Investigate the relative merits and strengths of data assimilation and ensemble methods. Develop different radiation code to build operational operators for the various satellite (including radar) sensors to allow direct data assimilation. Explore various modeling methods to determine forecast errors. An example is the determination of model error associated with low level winds that drive toxic dispersion for Homeland Defense. Transition model physics algorithms from RAMDAS and the RAMMS model to WRF applications.

Improve science educational outreach for K-12 school students through leadership and management of the GLOBE Program. Improve the utility of weather products. Improve science literacy through new and innovative programs that focus on undergraduate and K-12 understanding of the basics of weather. Maintain and expand virtual laboratory satellite databases to enhance interaction with other agencies involved in research and training activities. Continue to collaborate with international training groups, including the WMO Regional Meteorological Training Centers. Expand the application of wavelet data compression techniques for the transmission and archival of satellite imagery and model gridded fields.

Upgrade LAN to 1GB to allow the local network to support higher data rates to individual workstations and improved distributed processing options when needed. Investigate feasibility of installing X-band auto track antenna and earth station with the University that will allow CSU’s meteorological and earth resources researchers to access LandSat, MODIS, and other high data rate satellite sources. Improve CIRA’s support to both CIRA scientists and collaborative researchers through improved internal computational capacity and by fostering the sharing of national-level computational resources.

Improve the recognition and long-term career aspirations of CIRA employees through the full implementation of our new awards and promotional systems. Continue to emphasize peer review journal publications as a path to career development. Maintain a vibrant Post Doctoral program that will inject human capital into NOAA’s organizational (research) future. Assist NOAA in its diversity program by being a part of NOAA’s career track pipeline. Assist non-US citizens with visas, etc. to make opportunities available to a diverse workforce.

CIRA will assist NOAA in the development of meaningful metrics of knowledge workers.