ITPA Newsletter Vol. 1 – 2001

Congratulations to Duane Waliser, R. Wilson and M. Reynolds (BNL), who were very recently awarded funding from NOAA Sea Grant to instrument the Bridgeport – Port Jefferson Ferry with weather and marine sampling equipment to provide real-time data to the NWS and to obtain research quality data sets to investigate air-sea forcing/coupling issues in the Long Island Sound.

Craig Allen, who obtained a B.S. in meteorology from Stony Brook in 1979, has been selected for the Distinguished Alumni Award this year. He will be honored in a special ceremony on Oct 19. Read more about Craig Allen.

Would you like a catchy name for the ITPA newsletter? E-mail suggestions and I’ll put them up for a vote.

Hello everybody,

Thank you for your feedback on last weeks newsletter. This week, Duane Waliser announced an undergraduate internship starting next year. Read more about it in our new Opportunities section below.

In the last issue, we announced that Craig Allen has been selected for the SUNY Distinguished Alumni Award. Thanks to efforts of Sultan Hameed, Craig Allen has agreed to visit ITPA and join a special Meteorology Club meeting on Friday afternoon before the award ceremony later that night. Please join us in Endeavour Hall 139.

Taotao Qian is excited to announce her thesis proposal defense which willl be held on Friday.

Would you like a catchy name for the ITPA newsletter? E-mail suggestions and I’ll put them up for a vote.

Please find below this week’s calendar. Don’t forget, I need your input to keep the news current.

Have a good week,

Petra Udelhofen

p.s. Would you like to visit the Seawolf? The boat will be located at Danford’s Inn in Port Jefferson this weekend Oct 13-14 and open for visits between 11am and 5pm. The open house is part of the Port Jefferson Maritime Festival.

Hello everybody,

The deadline for the undergraduate internship is still open. Read more about it in our new Opportunities section below.

Please find below this week’s calendar. Don’t forget, I need your input to keep the news current.

Have a good week,

Petra Udelhofen

Hello everybody,

As you all know, Jialin Lin and Taotao Qian left for Boulder yesterday. I hope you didn’t miss their delicious farewell luncheon on Friday. Jialin Lin starts a postdoc at NOAA very soon. Taotao Qian, who successfully defended her thesis proposal two weeks ago, will be a remote SUNY student. Good luck to both of you.

Petra Udelhofen will be out of town Nov. 1-2 to attend a SPARC Climatology Meeting at NCAR in Boulder. It seems everybody else will be around.

The deadline for the undergraduate internship is still open until Wednesday. Read more about it in our new Opportunities section below.

Please find below this week’s calendar. Don’t forget, I need your input to keep the news current.

Have a good week,

Petra Udelhofen

Hello everybody,

here are the latest updates on ITPA activities.

Two faculty members of ITPA, Brian Colle and Edmund Chang, have been invited to serve as Associate Editors of Monthly Weather Review.

Minghua Zhang attended the joint DOE ARM/GCSS WG4 meeting from October 22 to 24 at NCAR, and made a presentation on a joint initiative of the ARM Modeling, Radiation, and Cloud Working Groups to derive vertical profiles of radiative heating and cooling at the ARM SGP site. Following this meeting, he attended the NASA TRMM Science Team Meeting from October 29 to November 1 in Fort Collins. He made a plenary presentation on behalf of the TRMM Working Group on Validation from Field Observations and had a poster presentation about “Experimental assimilation of vertical heating profiles by adjusting physical parameters in the cumulus convection scheme in the CCM.” The NASA TRMM satellite recently successfully underwent an orbit boost from the altitude of 350 km to 405 km to save fuel, making its projected life time to 2008.

Recent Publications:

A joint paper of many cloud resolving modeling groups in the United States and Europe using observed forcing data from the DOE ARM experiment has been accepted for publication in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (K.M Xu of NASA Langley is the lead author). Minghua Zhang is a co-author of the paper. It can be downloaded from http://www.met.utah.edu/skrueger/gcss/case3-revised-paper_18sep2001.pdf

Please find below this week’s calendar. Don’t forget, I need your input to keep the news current.

Have a good week,

Petra Udelhofen

Hello everybody,

here are the latest updates on ITPA activities. Each entry was provided by one of our members. This weeks contributors are Brian Colle, Bob DeZafra, Sultan Hameed, and Minghua Zhang.

As always, please find below this week’s calendar. Thanks for your input.
Have a good week,

Petra Udelhofen

Undergraduate Program

Brian Colle will talk this Thursday at 5:30 pm at Keller College, a residence hall at Stony Brook populated by science and engineering students. The talk in about issues and opportunities in weather and climate and it is a part of a course LSE 102: Opportunities in Science and Engineering.

Prime Time Event

Brian Colle and Gina Gartin will host the Atmospheric Sciences Prime Time event on Wednesday 12:00-1:30 pm in Geosciences room 171. See http://atmos.msrc.sunysb.edu/npages/ptime01.html for more details.

Graduate Program

There will be a meeting between all ITPA graduate students and ITPA director Minghua Zhang on Tuesday at 12:45 in Room 113. The purpose of the meeting is to communicate thoughts and concerns between students and faculty. Pizza will be served.

Recent Publications

Colle, B.A., C.F. Mass, and David Ovens, 2001: Evaluation of the timing and strength of MM5 and Eta surface trough passages over the eastern Pacific. Wea. Forecasting, 16, 553-572.

Marine Sciences News

There is a full page article, featuring MSRC faculty Mary Scranton, “Born to Explore the Ocean Floor”, in the Long Island section of this Sunday’s Newsday (November 11, 2001, A35). The article is posted in front of the main office EN145.

Alumni News

Drew Shindell, a former PhD student of Bob de Zafra’s, (“Model/Measurement Comparisons of Ozone Depleting Chlorine Chemistry in the Polar Stratosphere”, August, 1995), is currently running as a candidate for Secretary of the American Geophysical Union’s Division of Atmospheric Physics and Climate.

Dr. Iqbal Pittalwala, who graduated from ITPA in 1993 has been appointed as the Senior Public Information Representative for Science and Engineering at University of California, Riverside starting December 1, 2001.

Rumors

According to a reliable source, Bob Cess recently received his latest royalty of $25 from the sale of a book he and Sparrow wrote in 1970 (Radiation Heat Transfer, Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 340 pp). This arrived timely and was welcomed since Bob needs to order parts for car work on his third Alfa Romeo during the Thanksgiving break, even though there is the speculation that he has forgotten all what he wrote in the book.

Hello everybody,

It’s Thanksgiving week and, as you may have noticed, classes are not in session. Nevertheless, we have a few news items thanks to Gina Gartin, David Myers, Larry Swanson, Duane Waliser and Minghua Zhang. Job-seekers, please be aware that new postdoctoral job advertisements have been posted on the ITPA Bulletin Board in front of EN114. The AGU Atmospheric Sciences website also provides up-to-date job listings as advertised in EOS.

Have a nice Thanksgiving,

Petra Udelhofen

Air-Sea Interaction

The PJ Ferry – the PT Barnum will complete its two-week dry dock in Staten Island. During this period, the “holes” were cut in the bottom of the vessel to allow installation of a sea-water intake to measure surface water properties and a sea-chest that will house an acoustic doppler current profiler. It is expected/hoped that these instruments will be functioning during the vessel’s crossings starting in about feb/mar of 2002 (Duane Waliser).

Upcoming Conferences

A tropical waves and convection workshop will be held at NYU on November 30th and December 1st. Several ITPA students will be attending (David Myers).

Alumni News

An NSF-DOE sponsored field experiment INDOEX conducted over the Indian ocean has produced interesting results regarding the coupling of climate, clouds, aerosols, and chemistry. The experiment was co-organized by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen of Germany and Stony Brook ITPA alumni-Victor Alderson Professor of the University of California at San Diego, V. Ramanathan (Advisor: Bob Cess). A special issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres has just appeared reporting some of the scientific findings from INDOEX- (Vol. 106, No. D22, November 27, 2001). To read articles in this issue, you can save a trip to the main library by seeing some of the ITPA faculty members who subscribe to print and electronic copies of the journal (Minghua Zhang).

Marine Sciences News

The Evan R. Liblit Memorial Scholarship Fund Committee, the Waste Reduction and Management Institute and MSRC are pleased to announce that Ann Zulkosky is this year’s winner of the Liblit Memorial Scholarship (Larry Swanson).

Hello everybody,

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving break. Just before the holidays, Brian Colle provided me with an update of the current standings at the National Weather Forecast Contest. You might have heard that several ITPA undergraduate and graduate students as well as one ITPA faculty are participating in the contest. It is just past its midway point and the ITPA’ler are doing great. Here is the update after forecasting 4 locations (Key West, FL, Richmond VA, Denver CO, and Houston TX).:

We just finished 4th out 37 schools for Houston, TX (best of the SUNY schools, Albany was 25th). Chris Balliro is 25th overall (out of 810 forecasters) and 9th best of all 512 junior/seniors in country. Brian Pederson is 25th of all 512 junior/seniors in country. Yong Song is 32nd out of 163 graduate students. Brian Colle is 35th overall and 10th out of 91 faculty/staff. We are now in the top ten in the overall ranking, one behind Albany and it is just our 1^st year in competition. We’ll catch’m!!! Our success has sparked some local interest, a Newsday reporter will be here Tuesday to see the facilities and interview the students.

Aside from the contest, there are more good news: ITPA graduate student Jingbo Wu (advisor: Minghua Zhang) has just received a Global Change scholarship from the American Meteorological Society. Congratulations, Jingbo!

Later this week the NYU workshop on tropical waves and convection will take place in the NYC. Several ITPA students will be attending. Click here for to find out who will take notes.

Later this week, Minghua Zhang will be in Washington DC to attend the DOE ARM Science Team Executive Committee meeting. The meeting will review the ARM program and set up the agenda for the March 2002 ARM Science Team Meeting in Atlanta.

For those of you wo are looking for jobs, check out this link to the AGU Atmospheric Sciences website.

Have a nice week,

Petra Udelhofen

Produced by Petra Udelhofen

UpdatedSun, Dec 2, 2001

Hello everybody,

This week seems to be a week of travel.

Minghua Zhang will be in NASA Goddard to attend the Cumulus Convection Workshop. He will present a talk on “Integrated measurements from field experiments relevant to the thinking of cumulus convection parameterization in climate models.” After the meeting, he will visit collaborators in the Data Assimilation Office (DAO) of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to discuss ongoing collaborative research.

Duane Waliser will be attending the US CLIVAR Scientific Steering Committee Meeting next week (Dec 3-5) at GFDL to present results of his research on predictability of the Madden-Julian Oscillation and its implications for Asian-Australian monsoon and extra-tropical predictability.

Marvin Geller and Petra Udelhofen are participating in the Stratospheric Processes and Their Role in Climate (SPARC) Scientific Steering Group meeting at the University of Hawaii from December 4-7. Marv is the chairman of the Steering group. Petra presents the latest news from the SPARC data center, which is located in her office. She has just installed the Live Access Server, the NOAA/PMEL visualization software, for climate data on the web (http://www.sparc.sunysb.edu/las).

Brian Colle will be away for a field experiment.

Did you know that this past November 2001 was the warmest on record for Central Park in New York City? The average monthly temperature of 52.7^oF broke the previous record of 52.5^oF set in 1979.

For those of you wo are looking for jobs, check out our Job Opportunities this link to the AGU Atmospheric Sciences website.

Have a nice week,

Petra Udelhofen

p.s. If you want to read or listen to a brief interview that one of our ITPA members gave to Earth and Sky a while ago, you can read the transcript or download an audio file athttp://www.earthsky.com/2001/es011119.html.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research is seeking postdoctoral level scientists interested in furthering their research interests and developing expertise in new areas. Scientists who have recently received their Ph.D. have an exciting opportunity to work alongside experienced scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory Marine Meteorology Division which is located in Monterey, California. For more information: http://www.vsp.ucar.edu

Details can be found on the ITPA bulletin board next to Endeavour 114.

The Dept. of Meteorology at the University of Maryland announces an opening for a tenure-track faculty position to begin on or before the 2002-2003 academic year. (Details can be found on the ITPA bulletin board next to Endeavour 114.) http://www.atmos.umd.edu

Produced by Petra Udelhofen

UpdatedTue, Dec 11, 2001

Hello everybody,

This is the last week of classes, I’m sure everyone looks foreward to the holiday party on Friday 3pm to celebrate the end of the semester.

Sorry for being so late this week, but on the bright side, I got some late information which wouldn’t have made it into the newsletter otherwise. So let’s start with the whereabouts of this week’s travellers.

Minghua Zhang will be away for part of the week in San Francisco to attend a Steering Committee Meeting on a new PCMDI initiative (Program for Climate Model Diagnostics and Intercomparison) of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This new initiative aims to evaluate climate models through a weather forecasting mode. Similar work started in Europe in the last two years. The meeting will discuss strategies of implementing such an approach in the United States.

Marv Geller will be at the AGU meeting for the entire week. He is the president of the of AGU Atmospheric Sciences Section.

Brian Colle is away this week at the IMPROVE field program in the Pacific Northwest (http://improve.atmos.washington.edu/). The objective of this program is to collect radar and microphysical data over the Oregon Cascades in order to improve bulk microphysical parameterizations in atmospheric models. An incriminating photo of Brian was published in the Tacoma, WA News Tribune (on 12/10).

Also, Brian likes to announce a new graduate course for the Spring semester. Read more about it below.

And finally, there is a chance of snow on Dec 25 (somewhere in the US). Here is what David Myers has to say based on the NCEP ensemble forecast. Click here to view the contour plots.

The NCEP ensemble model shows that we are due for the breakup of the blocking high that has been situated between England and Iceland (finally!). While there is a great deal of model uncertainty about the trough that is set to form over the eastern half of N. America around Dec 21-25, there is enough ensemble agreement to indicate a good early season storm for parts of the US, particularly the Great Lakes area. The trough axis really seems to miss the Long Island region, though.

I must confess I don’t mind if it misses.

Have a nice week,

Petra Udelhofen

Synoptic and Mesoscale Meteorology (MAR597-4 credits) Spring 2002, lecture and lab: M and W 12:50-3:15

Prerequisite: Theoretical. Met II (dynamics) or permission This course will investigate the structure and evolution of mid-latitude cyclones, fronts, convective systems, coastal, and orographic phenomena. In lab, the relevant dynamics of representative cases will be explored using observations and numerical model output. All students are required to complete a synoptic/mesoscale research project that is hopefully related to his/her thesis or research interest (cyclone structure in GCM’s, synoptic flow predictability, tropical convection influence on mid-latitude flow, gravity waves and convection, landfalling cyclones, orographic precipitation, etc…).

Please let Brian Colle know if you have any questions.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research is seeking postdoctoral level scientists interested in furthering their research interests and developing expertise in new areas. Scientists who have recently received their Ph.D. have an exciting opportunity to work alongside experienced scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory Marine Meteorology Division which is located in Monterey, California. For more information: http://www.vsp.ucar.edu Details can be found on the ITPA bulletin board next to Endeavour 114.

The Dept. of Meteorology at the University of Maryland announces an opening for a tenure-track faculty position to begin on or before the 2002-2003 academic year. (Details can be found on the ITPA bulletin board next to Endeavour 114.) http://www.atmos.umd.edu

Produced by Petra Udelhofen

UpdatedTue, Dec 18, 2001

Hello everybody,

It’s final week and everybody seems busy wrapping up projects before the holidays. The only open event I know of is Chengbo Sun’s thesis proposol defense. It will be held on Wednesday 10 am in Javits center Room 223 as one of those video conference events that are always interesting. See below for further details.

Although the ensemble forecast models are less in agreement, it looks like that there is still a chance of snow on Dec 25 (somewhere in the US). Here is the NOAA/CPC’s longrange discussion from Monday December 17, 3pm:

BY DECEMBER 25…MODELS SHOW A RIDGE BUILDING OVER WESTERN NORTH AMERICA AT 500 MB WITH HIGH PRESSURE OVER THE ICELAND-GREENLAND AREA AND TROUGHING EXTENDING SOUTHWARD FROM ARCTIC CANADA TO THE GREAT LAKES REGION. A STRONG LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM SHOULD BE GETTING ORGANIZED OVER THE SOUTH-CENTRAL STATES NEAR THE START OF THE FORECAST PERIOD…AND THIS SHOULD BRING A VARIETY OF WINTRY PRECIPITATION TO THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN AREAS OF THE NATION.

We’ll follow up on this next week.

Have a nice week,

Petra Udelhofen

Synoptic and Mesoscale Meteorology (MAR597-4 credits) Spring 2002, lecture and lab: M and W 12:50-3:15

Prerequisite: Theoretical. Met II (dynamics) or permission This course will investigate the structure and evolution of mid-latitude cyclones, fronts, convective systems, coastal, and orographic phenomena. In lab, the relevant dynamics of representative cases will be explored using observations and numerical model output. All students are required to complete a synoptic/mesoscale research project that is hopefully related to his/her thesis or research interest (cyclone structure in GCM’s, synoptic flow predictability, tropical convection influence on mid-latitude flow, gravity waves and convection, landfalling cyclones, orographic precipitation, etc…).

Please let Brian Colle know if you have any questions.

The Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has a full time opening for a Research Analyst. E-mail applications to mcfarq@atmos.uiuc.edu

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research is seeking postdoctoral level scientists interested in furthering their research interests and developing expertise in new areas. Scientists who have recently received their Ph.D. have an exciting opportunity to work alongside experienced scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory Marine Meteorology Division which is located in Monterey, California. For more information: http://www.vsp.ucar.edu

Applications are invited for a tenure-track position at the assistant professor level in the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. http://weather.ou.edu

The Dept. of Meteorology at the University of Maryland announces an opening for a tenure-track faculty position to begin on or before the 2002-2003 academic year. http://www.atmos.umd.edu

Produced by Petra Udelhofen

UpdatedTue, Jan 8, 2002