E-Newsletter Vol. 15 – 2008

Welcome Back! The Fall 2008 semester officially begins on Tuesday, September 2.

The first “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, September 3 at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Professor Stephen Schwartz from the Atmospheric Sciences Division, Brookhaven National Laboratory, will present a seminar entitled, “Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System.” Light refreshments will be served. If you like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor Schwartz, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391. The entire TAOS schedule for this semester may be accessed at http://atmos.msrc.sunysb.edu/npages/taos.html.

The first “Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium” (OAC) speaker is Bob Gagosian, CEO of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. His seminar entitled, “A New Paradigm for Federal Research Funding and the Future of Oceanography,” will take place on Friday, September 5 at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120 (refreshments at 11: 45 a.m.). For additional information, please contact the host, David Conover, at 2-8781.

All are welcome to attend a seminar by David Rutledge entitled, “Hubbert’s Peak, The Coal Question, and Climate Change,” at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on Tuesday, September 2, at 1:15 p.m. The seminar takes place in the Hamilton Seminar Room, Building 555. A photo ID is required for entrance onto the BNL site.

Faculty News

Congratulations to Professor Emeritus Robert D. Cess, a member of the “Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) team selected to receive NASA’s Group Achievement Award. This award was given to the entire CERES team for their long list of accomplishments over the past decade.

Congratulations to Professor Marvin A. Geller, recipient of the prestigious International Cooperation Medal of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). Professor Geller was awarded the medal at the 37th COSPAR Scientific Assembly held in Montreal Canada from July 13-20. For additional details, please access http://www.somas.stonybrook.edu/news/itn08/itn080718.html.

Student News

Please welcome our new ITPA M.S. students; Sean Bratton and Alex Kahn, and Ph.D. students; Peter Alpert, Aiying Chen, Jungmin Lee, Martin Riessen, Matthew Souders, Shu Meir Wang and Jingjing Zou. A directory of student offices and telephone numbers will be distributed next week.

Mark your calendars for the SoMAS New Student Barbecue on Friday, September 12, at 3:00 p.m. behind Discovery Hall.

Congratulations to SoMAS students Owen Doherty and Chuck Wall, recipients of the 2008 Schubel Fellowships. The fellowship, named for former Dean and Director of the Marine Sciences Research Center, Jerry R. Schubel, provides an annual stipend supplement for graduate students committed to translating science into forms that are accessible to the public.

All are invited to attend the Graduate Student Organization’s Fall semester party on Friday, August 29, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Velvet Lounge, 766 North Country Road and Route 25A in East Setauket. There will be free Indian food and great happy hour drink prices. For additional information, please contact GSO President, Liliana Naydan, at lnaydan@ic.sunysb.edu.

Miscellaneous

During the summer, Dr. Jeff Anderson from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) visited ITPA and gave a tutorial of the NCAR Ensemble Kalman Filtering Data Assimilation Testbed (DART). Separately, Dr. John Dennis from NCAR gave a tutorial on running the Community Climate System Model on the New York Blue Gene supercomputer. Both tutorials were well attended by students and faculty in SoMAS and the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics.

The 3rd BlueGene Climate Science Symposium of Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and IBM took place last week at BNL. Participants of the symposium discussed ongoing atmospheric and oceanic modeling research using the New York BlueGene supercomputer. Several numerical models have been used for different applications. These include the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM), the SAM (System for Atmospheric Modeling), the Goddard Cloud Ensemble Model,the POP Ocean Model, and the Finite Volume Coastal Ocean Model or FVCOM.

Mark your calendars for the “Conference on Coastal Storms, their Physics, Prediction, Impact, and Future Changes” (CPPIF) scheduled for November 12-14 at the Wang Center and Humanities Building. This is an event of the “Conversations-in-the-Disciplines,” a joint conference by Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, the Humanities Institute, and the Philosophy Department. Further details may be found by accessing the events page athttp://atmos.msrc.sunysb.edu.

This year’s Oktoberfest celebration will take place on Friday, October 3. This is an annual fundraising event with proceeds earmarked for the Petra M. Udelhofen Memorial Scholarship Fund. Additional details will be included in a future newsletter.

The Bay Scallop Bowl has been scheduled for Saturday, February 7, 2009 at the Student Activities Center. Please consider for volunteering for this important event. For more information, please contact Kim Knoll at kknoll@notes.cc.sunysb.edu, or the volunteer coordinator, Tara Duffy, atbayscallopbowl@yahoo.com.

Faculty and staff may purchase a SeaWolves All-Sports pass from the Department of Athletics for $125. The pass entitles you to a seat at all Stony Brook home football, men’s and women’s basketball, and men’s lacrosse games. To purchase, please call 632-WOLF or emailSeawolvesTickets@stonybrook.edu.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 by George E. Carroll

The week’s “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, September 10 at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Professor Edward Luke from the Atmospheric Sciences Division, Brookhaven National Laboratory, will present a seminar entitled, “Extracting Cloud Properties from Doppler Radar Spectra.” Light refreshments will be served. If you like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor Luke, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391. The TAOS seminar schedule for this semester may be accessed athttp://atmos.msrc.sunysb.edu/npages/taos.html.

The next “Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium” (OAC) speaker is David Burdige from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. His seminar entitled, “Carbonate Dissolution in Bahamas Bank Sediment,” will take place on Friday, September 12 at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120 (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.). For additional information, please contact the host,
Bob Aller, at 2-8746.

Due to the New Student Barbecue, there will be no Friday Weather Discussion this week.

Faculty News

Professor Marvin Geller is currently in Italy attending the Stratospheric Processes and Their Role in Climate (SPARC) 4th General Assembly from August 28 – September 8. For details, please accesshttp://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/SPARC/index.html.

Student News

All are welcome to attend the SoMAS New Student Barbecue on Friday, September 12, at 3:00 p.m. behind Discovery Hall. For details, please contact the Educational Programs Office at 2-8681.

Professor Larry Swanson is seeking applications for the Evan R. Liblit Scholarship, an annual $3,500 award given to a promising graduate student who demonstrates excellence in academic achievement and who is undertaking a marine, terrestrial, groundwater, atmosphere pollution-related or waste management research topic. For additional information, please contact the Waste Reduction and Management Institute at 2-8704.

Miscellaneous

All are welcome to attend the New York Marine Sciences Consortium (NYMSC) inaugural meeting on September 19 at the Wang Center. The NYMSC is an association of New York colleges, universities, and degree-granting institutions with expertise and interest in marine and/or coastal science. For additional information, please view the flyer. If you plan to attend, please send the completed registration form to Leslie Taylor at the address indicated on the form.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is recruiting a visiting scientist to work at the NOAA National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS) Office of Research and Applications in Camp Springs, Maryland. The position involves the operational impact of satellite surface vector wind on numerical weather prediction. Additional details may be accessed at http://www.vsp.ucar.edu, and are posted on the ITPA bulletin board in Endeavour Hall.

UCAR is soliciting applications for the NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. The objective of this program is to help create the next generation of researchers needed for climate studies. Applicants should be recent Ph.D.’s in sciences that address studies of relevance to the NOAA Climate and Global Change Program. For details, please accesshttp://www.climate.noaa.gov or see poster on ITPA bulletin board.

The National Weather Association (NWA) is a professional, nonprofit association serving individuals interested in operational meteorology and related activities. If you are interested in joining, please access http://www.nwa-registration.org/. The NWA grants over $4,000 in scholarships each year.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Friday, September 5, 2008 by George E. Carroll

The week’s “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, September 17 at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Professor Adam Sobel from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, will present a seminar entitled, “Surface Fluxes and Tropical Intraseasonal Oscillations.” Light refreshments will be served. If you like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor Sobel, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

Due to the inaugural meeting of the New York Marine Sciences Consortium (NYMSC) there will be no Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium this week. All are welcome to attend the NYMSC meeting at the Wang Center on September 19 beginning at 10:00 a.m. For details, please accesshttp://www.somas.stonybrook.edu/~nymsc/.

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

A new lecture series, “From Peer to Public: Communicating Science to a Wider Audience,” begins on Tuesday, September 16, at 7:00 p.m. at the Wang Center. Part-time faculty member from the School of Journalism, Julia C. Mead, will present a seminar entitled, “Science as Metaphor: The Interplay of Source and Target in Communicating Useful Information to a Mainstream Audience.” This lecture series is presented by the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Journalism to encourage science graduate students and faculty to share their research with the public and to learn how to effectively communicate science to a broader audience.

Faculty News

This weekend, Professor Marvin Geller will attend a symposium in memory of Dr. Edward Norton Lorenz from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The symposium will take place at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, and will feature talks by three prominent colleagues of Dr. Lorenz, as well as personal remembrances by friends and colleagues, followed by an evening concert.

Professor Malcolm Bowman has been appointed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to join a 15-member New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC). The purpose of the panel, fashioned after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to advise the Mayor of the precautions and adaptations New York City needs to undertake to preserve its infrastructure and the safety of its communities against threats arising from climate change, including rising sea level, storm surges and changes in weather and precipitation patterns. The panel is chaired jointly by Cynthia Rosensweig, Director of the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University/GISS and William Solecki, Director of the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities.

Please remember to vote for faculty representatives for the Presidential Search Committee. Nominees and their statements are listed on the University Senate’s website:http://www.stonybrook.edu/univsenate. Voting may be done through the SOLAR system (deadline 5:00 p.m. on September 16).

As a reminder, ITPA faculty members planning to be out of town should inform Gina (ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu) so that your travel plans can be noted on the ITPA “out of town” board in Endeavour Hall 129.

Student News

Graduate student, Xiaoming Xia will defend her thesis proposal on Friday, September 19, at at 10:45 a.m. in Endeavour Hall 113.

Volunteers are needed to assist at this year’s Oktoberfest scheduled for Friday, October 3, at 4:30 p.m. in the SoMAS boathouse. Details and sign-up sheets are posted near the entrance to the mail room in Endeavour Hall.

Miscellaneous

Mark your calendars for the “Conference on Coastal Storms,” a joint conference hosted by the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, the Humanities Institute, and the Philosophy Department. The conference. is scheduled to take place from November 12-14. For details, please accesshttp://www.somas.stonybrook.edu/storm/.

The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences is pleased to announce the establishment of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science. To view the press release, please accesshttp://commcgi.cc.stonybrook.edu/am2/publish/General_University_News_2/oceanconservation.shtml. The new Institute is located in Discovery Hall.

Provost Eric Kaler is seeking nominations for the Distinguished Service and Distinguished Teaching Professorships, and the Chancellor’s/President’s Awards for Excellence. Complete details may be accessed at http://www.sunysb.edu/provost/form/index.shtml.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Friday, September 12, 2008 by George E. Carroll

The week’s “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, September 24, at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Professor David Black from Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences will present a seminar entitled, “Late Holocene Tropical Atlantic Climate Variability.” Light refreshments will be served. If you like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor Black, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Tony Michaels from Preteus Environmental Technologies. His seminar entitled, “Entrepreneurs in Ocean Science: Can We Help Save the Planet?” will be presented on Friday, September 26, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Michaels, please contact the Dean’s Office at 2-8781.

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

All are welcome to attend a seminar at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on Friday, September 26, at 11:00 a.m. in Building 815E. Dr. Devinder Mahajan from, BNL’s Energy Sciences and Technology Department will present a seminar entitled, “Burning Ice and Climate Change.” A photo ID is required for entrance to the BNL site.

Faculty News

This week Professor Brian Colle will be attending the 14th annual Cyclone Workshop in Sainte-Adle, Quebec, Canada, where he will present a talk entitled, “Hemispheric Evolution and Origin of Extratropical Cyclone Errors Within NCEP Operational Models.” Graduate student, David Novak, will also make a presentation entitled, “A climatology of Mesoscale Band Formation and Evolution Within Northeast U.S. cyclones.”

On Friday, September 27, Professor Minghua Zhang will be visiting the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown and will give a presentation entitled, “Toward Understanding the Tropical Biases of Climate Simulations in Numerical Models”.

Student News

The SoMAS Oktoberfest fundraiser has been rescheduled from October 3 to October 17. Festivities begin at 4:30 p.m. in the boathouse and volunteers are still needed. For details, please see the information posted near the entrance to the mail room in Endeavour Hall.

Miscellaneous

The Annual University Convocation and State of the University Address will take place on Wednesday, September 24, at 4:00 p.m. on the main stage of the Staller Center. Refreshments immediately following in the Staller Center Plaza. All are welcome to attend.

Mark your calendars for the “Conference on Coastal Storms,” a joint conference hosted by the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, the Humanities Institute, and the Philosophy Department. The conference. is scheduled to take place from November 12-14. For details, please access http://www.somas.stonybrook.edu/storm/.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Thursday, September 18, 2008 by George E. Carroll

In observance of Rosh Hashanah, there will be no “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar this week.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Kay Bidle from Rutgers University. Her seminar entitled, “Microbial Ecology/Phytoplankton Physiology and Mortality, the Structure and Function of Microbial Food Webs,” will be presented on Friday, October 3, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Bidle, please contact the Dean’s Office at 2-8781.

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

All are welcome to attend a lecture by Dr. Ellen K. Pikitch, Executive Director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, on Friday, October 3, at 7:30 p.m. Dr. Pikitch’s lecture entitled, “Conservation of Endangered Marine Fishes in the World’s Oceans,” takes place at Stony Brook Southampton in the Duke Lecture Hall-Chancellors Hall. Reception will follow lecture.

Faculty News

Professor Marat Khairoutdinov will make a presentation at the National Science Foundation’s Center for Multi-Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes External Advisory Panel which takes place on September 30 and October 1 at Colorado State University.

Student News

Volunteers are still needed for the SoMAS Oktoberfest fundraiser on October 17 beginning at 4:30 p.m. in the boathouse. This is an annual fundraising event in memory of ITPA faculty member, Dr. Petra M. Udelhofen. Proceeds benefit the scholarship fund which supports an undergraduate student majoring in Environmental Studies or Atmospheric Sciences. Volunteers are needed to help decorate, serve food and beverages, and/or donate baked goods. To volunteer, please add your name to the sign-up sheet posted outside of the mail room in Endeavour Hall.

Professor Larry Swanson is seeking applications for the Evan R. Liblit Scholarship, an annual $3,500 award given to a promising graduate student who demonstrates excellence in academic achievement and who is undertaking a marine, terrestrial, groundwater, atmosphere pollution-related or waste management research topic. For additional information, please contact the Waste Reduction and Management Institute at 2-8704.

As a reminder, please sign the September attendance roster located in the Main Office.

Miscellaneous

Mark your calendars for the “Conference on Coastal Storms,” a joint conference hosted by the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, the Humanities Institute, and the Philosophy Department. The conference. is scheduled to take place from November 12-14. For details, please access http://www.somas.stonybrook.edu/storm/.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Thursday, September 25, 2008 by George E. Carroll

The week’s “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, October 8 at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Professor Jawed Iqbal from the Department of Mathematics, University of Karachi, Pakistan, will present a seminar entitled, “A Re-interpretation of the Impact of North Atlantic Oscillation on European Climate.” Light refreshments will be served. If you would like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor Iqbal, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Joannes Westerink from the University of Notre Dame. His seminar entitled, “Modeling Hurricane Storm Surge – Towards Petascale Computing, Lessons from New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina,” will be presented on Friday, October 10, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Westerink, please contact the Dean’s Office at 2-8781.

The HERA Group invites you to their first lecture of the Fall semester. Bruce E. Humenik from Applied Energy Group will present a lecture entitled, “Offshore Wind Power: Current Perspectives,” on Wednesday, October 8, at 2:30 p.m. in room 412 of the Chemistry Building. For additional information, please contact Mike Erickson at merickso@ic.sunysb.edu.

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

Faculty News

On October 8, Professor Edmund Chang will visit the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies in Maryland, and will present a seminar entitled, “How Much Do We Understand Storm Track Variability and Change?” On October 9-10, he will attend THe Observing System Research and Predictability EXperiment (THORPEX) Pacific Asian Regional Campaign (T-PARC) Workshop at the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), and will make a presentation entitled, “Explosive Cyclogenesis Over Western Pacific: Predictability and Downstream Impacts.”

Professor Brian Colle will also attend the THORPEX workshop from October 8-10.

Student News

Please considering volunteering for the SoMAS Oktoberfest fundraiser on October 17 beginning at 4:30 p.m. in the boathouse. This is an annual fundraising event in memory of ITPA faculty member, Dr. Petra M. Udelhofen. Proceeds benefit the scholarship fund which supports an undergraduate student majoring in Environmental Studies or Atmospheric Sciences. Volunteers are needed to help decorate, serve food and beverages, and/or donate baked goods. To volunteer, please add your name to the sign-up sheet posted outside of the mail room in Endeavour Hall.

Professor Larry Swanson is seeking applications for the Evan R. Liblit Scholarship, an annual $3,500 award given to a promising graduate student who demonstrates excellence in academic achievement and who is undertaking a marine, terrestrial, groundwater, atmosphere pollution-related or waste management research topic. For additional information, please contact the Waste Reduction and Management Institute at 2-8704.

Applications are being accepted for the Evan Frankel Memorial Scholarship for undergraduate students. The scholarships are available to undergraduates majoring in marine science or marine science vertebrate biology and are worth up to $4,000. For additional details, please contact Chris Gobler at 2-3736. Deadline for applications is October 20.

Miscellaneous

In order to reduce our use of paper products, we request that you bring your own coffee/tea cup to SoMAS seminars. Thank you for your cooperation.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Friday, October 3, 2008 by George E. Carroll

The week’s “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, October 15 at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Professor Paul Markowski from the Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University, will present a seminar entitled, “Tornadogenesis: Our Current Understanding and Questions to Guide Future Research.” Light refreshments will be served. If you would like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor Markowoski, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Hans Dam from the University of Connecticut. His seminar entitled, “The Evolution of Resistance to Toxic Phytoplankton in Copepods,” will be presented on Friday, October 17, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Dam, please contact the Dean’s Office at 2-8781.

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) will be celebrating its 7th annual Oktoberfest fundraiser on Friday, October 17th. Festivities will commence in the boathouse (adjacent to Discovery Hall) at 4:30 p.m. Traditional German fare will be available for purchase, including bratwurst, potato pancakes, spaetzle, and apple pie, along with a wide selection of hot and cold beverages. Proceeds of this event benefit the Petra M. Udelhofen Memorial Scholarship Fund, which supports an undergraduate student majoring in Environmental Studies or Atmospheric Sciences. As always, please invite friends, colleagues and family to join us for a fun evening.

Faculty News

This week, Professor Minghua Zhang will be in Boulder, Colorado to attend the annual meeting of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). The theme of this year’s meeting is “Making the Nation Resilient to Severe Weather and Climate Change.” Later in the week, he will attend the Heads and Chairs Meeting of the American Meteorological Society and American Geophysical Union to discuss research, curriculum, funding, and other program issues in Atmospheric sciences.

Student News

Several volunteers are still needed for this year’s Oktoberfest fundraiser. To sign up, please see information posted at the entrance to the mailroom in Endeavour Hall.

A NASA-sponsored Heliophysics Summer School will be hosted by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Visiting Scientist Program in Boulder, Colorado, from July 22-29, 2009. The summer school has two principal aims; (1) to deepen appreciation of the basic science of heliophysics for a select group of students as teachers take them through highly interactive seminars and hands-on working groups, and (2) to produce a series of textbooks from which heliophysics may be taught at universities worldwide. For further information, please call (303) 497-8649 or accesshttp://www.vsp.ucar.edu.

Miscellaneous

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is recruiting for the following positions:

• a research meteorologist to work at the Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center (TPC/NHC) in Miami, Florida, in the area of satellite retrievals of ocean surface vector winds.
• a visiting scientist to conduct research at the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, in the area of pollutant transport modeling, climate variability, and air-surface exchange.
• recent or anticipated Ph.D.s for participation in the US Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Climate Prediction Applications Postdoctoral Program (CPAPP). This program was developed to encourage and build a pool of scientists qualified to transfer advances in climate science and prediction into climate-related decision frameworks and tools.

For further information on these UCAR positions, please access http://www.vsp.ucar.edu. Information is also posted on the ITPA bulletin board in Endeavour Hall.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Monday, October 13, 2008 by George E. Carroll

The week’s “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, October 22 at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Professor Alan Robock from the Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, will present a seminar entitled, “Climatic Effects of Regional Nuclear Wars.” Light refreshments will be served. If you would like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor Robock, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

There will be a special TAOS seminar on Thursday, October 23, at 2:00 p.m. in Endeavour Hall 120. Dr. Valery Yudin from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research will present a seminar entitled, “Combined Model-Data Analysis of UTLS Constituents: Value and Impact of Aura Data.” To schedule an appointment with Professor Yudin, please contact Gina Gartin atggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Bill Fitzgerald from the University of Connecticut. His seminar entitled, “Biogeochemistry of Mercury,” will be presented on Friday, October 24, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Fitzgerald, please contact the Dean’s Office at 2-8781.

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

Faculty News

This week, Professor Minghua Zhang will be visiting the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, where he will present a seminar entitled, “Recent Progresses in Global Climate Modeling”. He will subsequently visit the Chinese Meteorological Administration to discuss collaborative research on regional climate modeling.

On October 21 and 22, Professor Brian Colle will be in Boulder, Colorado to attend the Unidata Policy Committee meeting. The Policy Committee makes recommendations to the President of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) on Unidata policies, activities, and objectives. The eight voting members of the Committee are drawn from universities and appointed by the President of UCAR.

Professor Marvin Geller will speak at “Plumbfest 2008,” a symposium and festschrift celebrating Alan Plumb’s 60th birthday. This event will be held on October 24-25 at Columbia University in New York City. For details, please access http://www.plumbfest.columbia.edu.

Professor Daniel Knopf will attend the Annual Conference of the American Association for Aerosol Research from October 20 to 24 in Rosen Shingle Creek, Florida, and will present three posters:

• Homogeneous Ice Nucleation from Aqueous Aerosol Particles Containing Organic Surrogates of Biomass Burning. DANIEL A. KNOPF, Miguel D. Lopez, Yannick Rigg, Bing Bing Wang
• Modeling Atmospheric Heterogeneous Chemistry Using a Dynamic Uptake Coefficient Treatment. Marco Springmann, Nicole Riemer, DANIEL KNOPF
• Heterogeneous Reactions of NO3 Radicals with Organic Liquids and Monolayers that Simulate Organic Aerosol Surfaces. SIMONE GROSS, Daniel A. Knopf, Allan K Bertram

Student News

Special thanks to our student volunteers who did a wonderful job coordinating this year’s Oktoberfest fundraiser. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Miscellaneous

The Oktoberfest Planning Committee thanks you for your participation and continued support in memory of ITPA Professor, Petra M. Udelhofen. Thanks to your generosity, we were able to raise over $1000 at this year’s Oktoberfest event.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Monday, October 20, 2008 by George E. Carroll

The week’s “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, October 29, at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Professor Edmund Chang from the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences will present a seminar entitled, “Storm Track Dynamics and Variability – What Don’t We Know about Storm Tracks.” Light refreshments will be served. If you would like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor Chang, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Robert Weisberg from the University of South Florida. His seminar entitled, “Ocean Circulation/Ocean-Atmosphere Interaction/Storm Surge Research,” will be presented on Friday, October 31, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Weisberg, please contact the Dean’s Office at 2-8781

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

Faculty News

This week Professor Brian Colle and graduate students Kelly Lombardo and John Murray will be attending the 24th Conference on Severe Local Storms in Savannah, GA. Their presentations are as follows:

• John Murray: “A climatology of the spatial and temporal distribution of convection over the Northeast United States.”
• Kelly Lombardo: “A climatology of convective system morphology over the Northeast United States.”.
• Brian Colle: “Tornadic convection in the New York City Metropolitan Region: The 8 August 2007 event and a composite analysis.”

Professor Minghua Zhang will present this year’s Stewart Harris Memorial Lecture on Environmental Issues. The lecture entitled, “Global Climate Change: The Human Driver, the Knowns and Unknowns,” takes place on Wednesday, October 29, at 1:00 p.m. in the Engineering Building, room 231. All are welcome to attend.

On Wednesday, October 29 at 4:30 p.m. Stony Brook’s Humanities Institute will be showing, in room 1006, the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” (Al Gore) as part of their Film and Discussions Series. Discussions will be led by Professors Malcolm Bowman and E. Ann Kaplan.

On October 17, Professor Sultan Hameed presented a lecture, “A Re-interpretation of the NAO,” at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University.

Student News

Congratulations to Thomas Di Liberto, recipient of the Mattice Sea Grant Scholar Travel Award. Tom is doing his graduate work under Professor Brian Colle of the Stony Brook Storm Surge Team. He will use the funds to attend the 89th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Phoenix, Arizona in January 2009, where he will present the verification of the Stony Brook Storm Surge model.

Miscellaneous

Congratulations to Qingzhi Zhu, winner of the 50/50 raffle at the Oktoberfest fundraiser which took place on October 17. Thanks to all who participated.

Mark your calendars for the “Conference on Coastal Storms,” a joint conference hosted by the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, the Humanities Institute, and the Philosophy Department. The conference. is scheduled to take place from November 12-14. For details, please access http://www.somas.stonybrook.edu/storm/.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Monday, October 27, 2008 by George E. Carroll

The week’s “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, November 5, at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Dr. Robert McGraw from the Atmospheric Sciences Division, Brookhaven National Laboratory, will present a seminar entitled, “Statistical Approaches to Aerosol Dynamics for Climate Simulation.” Light refreshments will be served. If you would like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor McGraw, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Tim Ku from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. His seminar entitled, “Records of Cultural Eutrophication Events and Geochemical Paleoredox Indicators in Freshwater Sediments: Implications for Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions and Remediation Efforts,” will be presented on Friday, November 7, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Ku, please contact Chet Frost in the Dean’s Office at 2-8781.

All are welcome to attend the SoMAS Southampton lecture on Friday, November 7, at 7:30 p.m. SoMAS Professor Cindy Lee will present a seminar entitled, “Ocean Acidification and the Global Carbon Cycle.” This lecture takes place at Duke Hall-Chancellor’s Hall on the Southampton campus. Reception will follow lecture.

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

Faculty News

On November 5-6, Professor Brian Colle, along with several graduate students, will be attending the 10th Annual Northeast Operational Workshop (NROW) in Albany, New York. Professor Colle will make a presentation entitled, “The Ambrose Jet: Climatology and Simulations of Warm-Season Coastally Enhanced Winds in the New York Bight Region.” Please see “Student News” below for information on student presentations.

On October 30, Professor Minghua Zhang visited Columbia University and presented a presentation entitled, “A Framework to Understand and Test Cloud Feedbacks in General Circulation Models.”

Student News

Please remember to sign the October attendance roster located in the Main Office.

The following students will make presentations at the 10th Annual Northeast Operation Workshop (NROW) in Albany on November 5-6.

• Tom DiLiberto: “Validation of Storm Surge Models for the New York Bight and Long Island Regions and the Impact of Ensembles.”
• Michael Erickson: “Use of Mesoscale Ensemble Weather Predictions to Improve Short-Term Precipitation and Hydrological Forecasts”
• John Murray: “A Spatial Climatology of Convection in the Northeast U.S.”
• Kelly Lombardo: “Convective System Morphology over Northeast United States.”
• David Novak: “A High-Resolution Climatology and Composite Study of Mesoscale Band Evolution within Northeast U.S. Cyclones.”

Miscellaneous

Donations are needed for the Port Jefferson Food Pantry. Collection boxes are located in MASIC (Challenger Hall 165), the NY Sea Grant Institute (Discovery Hall 121), the Waste Reduction and Management Institute (Duchess Hall 147), and the SoMAS mail room in Endeavour Hall. Please consider donating a non-perishable food item.

In an effort to reduce our use of paper products, we would appreciate it if seminar attendees would bring their own coffee/tea cups to SoMAS seminars. Thank you for your cooperation.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Saturday, November 1, 2008 by George E. Carroll

Due to the Changing Climates, Changing Minds conference this week, there will be no Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (TAOS) seminar this week. For further details regarding the conference, please access http://www.somas.stonybrook.edu/storm/.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Diana Aga from SUNY Buffalo. Her seminar entitled, “Biodegradation of Pharmaceutical Contaminants in Engineered Bioreactors” will be presented on Friday, November 15, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Aga, please contact Chet Frost in the Dean’s Office at 2-8781.

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

Faculty News

Professor Marvin Geller will be attending the Stratospheric Processes and their Role in Climate (SPARC) Scientific Steering Group (SSG) meeting in Toronto, Canada from November 11-13.

Student News

Faculty and graduate students are invited to attend a Global Forum on Responsible Management Education at the UN on December 4 and 5. Registration is free. For complete details, please accesshttp://www.unprme.org/global-forum/index.php.

Miscellaneous

Donations are needed for the Port Jefferson Food Pantry. Collection boxes are located in MASIC (Challenger Hall 165), the NY Sea Grant Institute (Discovery Hall 121), the Waste Reduction and Management Institute (Duchess Hall 147), and the SoMAS mail room in Endeavour Hall. Please consider donating a non-perishable food item.

In an effort to reduce our use of paper products, we would appreciate it if seminar attendees would bring their own coffee/tea cups to SoMAS seminars. Thank you for your cooperation.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Friday, November 7, 2008 by George E. Carroll

This week’s Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (TAOS) seminar speaker is Dr. Ronald Prinn from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His seminar entitled, “Recent Global Changes in Greenhouse Gases: How Much and Why?” will be presented on Wednesday, November 19, at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Light refreshments will be served. To schedule and appointment to meet with Dr. Prinn, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Gordon Taylor from the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University. His seminar entitled, “Antarctic Sea Ice Microbial Communities (SIMCO): Light and Nutrients – Productivity in the Balance,” will be presented on Friday, November 21, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Taylor, please contact Chet Frost in the Dean’s Office at 2-8781.

The Friday Weather Discussion will take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Meteorology Laboratory, Endeavour Hall 139. Topic to be announced on day of discussion.

Faculty News

From November 19-21, Professor Marvin Geller will be in Berlin as a participant of The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) Review Panel which takes place at the Institute of Meteorology at Freie Universität.

This week, Professor Minghua Zhang will be traveling to Princeton, NJ to attend the DOE ARM Cloud Modeling and Parameterization Working Group meeting.

Student News

The organizers of the Global Forum on Responsible Management Education are seeking graduate student volunteers. The forum takes place at the UN on December 4 and 5 and registration is free. For additional information, please access http://www.unprme.org/global-forum/index.php.

Miscellaneous

A very special thanks goes out to all those who assisted with our Coastal Storms Conference on November 12 and 13, specifically Leslie Taylor, Kim Knoll, and Jingjing Zou for staffing the registration table and extending a warm welcome to our guests, to George Carroll for assisting with logistics and taking photos, to Wuyin Lin and Owen Doherty for providing transportation for our visitors, to Tom Di Liberto and Xiaoming Xia for assisting with traffic flow and parking, to Tom Wilson for audio needs, to Cliff Jones for setting up the room (before he left for vacation) and to John Graham, Kim Knoll, and Mae Johnson for cleaning up after the conference.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Monday, November 17, 2008 by George E. Carroll

Due to the Thanksgiving break, there will be no Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences seminar, Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium or Friday Weather Discussion.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING !

Faculty News

On Monday, Professor Minghua Zhang, along with other members of SoMAS, will be traveling to the University of Rhode Island to discuss collaborative research projects.

On December 3, Professor Marvin Geller will be presenting an invited plenary talk entitled, “Solar Variability Influences on the Earth’s Climate” at the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) 18th National Congress in Adelaide, Australia.

Student News

Congratulations to ITPA graduate student, Kelly Lombardo. Kelly was awarded the “Best Student Oral Presentation Award” for her presentation entitled, “A Climatology of Convective System Morphology Over the Northeast United States” at the American Meteorological Society’s 24th Conference on Severe Local Storms which took place in Savannah, Georgia last month.

The winners of the 2008-09 Evan R. Liblit Scholarships are Brooke Rodgers (Graduate Scholarship) and Amandeep Parhar (Undergraduate Scholarship). The students were honored at a breakfast on November 13 at the Culinary Arts Center in Central Islip. Congratulations Brooke and Amandeep.

The SoMAS Graduate Student Club announces the first Okubo Distinguished Speaker, Dr. Farooq Azam from the University of California, San Diego. The first Okubo seminar will take place on March 16, 2009.

Miscellaneous

Save the Date ! This year’s SoMAS holiday party will take place on Friday, December 12 in Endeavour Hall 120. Additional details will be provided next week.

Due to the generosity of the SoMAS community in the part, we have been able to provide holiday gifts to needy children for many years. As we approach the holiday season, please consider making a donation for those less fortunate. We are seeking donations of new/unwrapped toys for children between the ages of 1 to 12. Items may be dropped off at the ITPA Office, Endeavour Hall 129

The Institute for Ocean Conservation Science is seeking a senior postdoctoral associate. For further details, please access this link or contact Jesse Brushini at 2-9325.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Friday, November 21, 2008 by George E. Carroll

The week’s “Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” (TAOS) seminar will take place on Wednesday, December 3 at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Professor Carl Wunsch from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present a seminar entitled, “The Global Ocean Circulation and Its Variability.” Light refreshments will be served. If you would like to schedule an appointment to meet with Professor Wunsch, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Dr. Richard Seager from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University. His seminar entitled, “The Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics of North American Drought: From the Medieval Period to the Greenhouse Future” will be presented on Friday, December 5, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Seager, please contact the Dean’s Office at 2-8781.

All are welcome to attend a lecture by Professor Brian Colle from the Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres at SoMAS on Friday, December 5, at 7:30 p.m. Professor Colle’s lecture entitled, “Climatology and Modeling of Storm Surges in New York’s Coastal Waters” takes place at Stony Brook Southampton in the Duke Lecture Hall-Chancellors Hall. Reception will follow lecture.

Faculty News

The UUP holiday party takes place on Friday, December 12, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the University Cafe. Light refreshments will be provided as well as entertainment by “Jack’s Waterfall.” Attendance is limited. Please RSVP to Corinne Burns at 2-6570.

Student News

The SoMAS Graduate Student Club (Carolyn, Bingbing, Stephanie, Xiaona and Zosia) is organizing this year’s holiday party scheduled for Friday, December 12, at 5:00 p.m. in Endeavour Hall 120. Food and beverage donations are needed. Please see the information and sign up sheets posted outside of the mailroom in Endeavour Hall.

Miscellaneous

The Office of Conferences and Special Events is seeking volunteers to assist with graduation on December 21. To volunteer, please contact Peg Abbatiello at 2-6320.

Due to the generosity of the SoMAS community in the part, we have been able to provide holiday gifts to needy children for many years. As we approach the holiday season, please consider making a donation for those less fortunate. We are seeking donations of new/unwrapped toys for children between the ages of 1 to 12. Items may be dropped off at the ITPA Office, Endeavour Hall 129

The Institute for Ocean Conservation Science is seeking a senior postdoctoral associate. For further details, please access this link or contact Jesse Bruschini at 2-9325.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Monday, December 1, 2008 by George E. Carroll

Please join us for the final Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (TAOS) seminar for the Fall 2008 semester. Dr. Gabriel Lau from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University will present a seminar entitled, “A Model Investigation on the Role of Air-Sea Interaction in the Climatological Evolution and ENSO-Related Variability of the Summer Monsoon Over South China and Western Pacific,” on Wednesday, December 10, at 12:00 noon in Endeavour Hall 120. Light refreshments will be served. If you would like to schedule an appointment to meet with Dr. Lau, please contact Professor Sultan Hameed at 2-8391.

This week’s Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) speaker is Professor Constantino Vetriani from Rutgers University. His seminar entitled, “Microbial Colonization of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents on the East Pacific Rise (90N) Following a Recent Volcanic Eruption” will be presented on Friday, December 12, at 12:00 noon (refreshments at 11:45 a.m.) in Endeavour Hall 120. To schedule an appointment with Professor Vetriani, please contact the Dean’s Office at 2-8781. Dr. Vetriani is the final speaker in the Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium series this semester.

Faculty News

On December 3, Professor Marvin Geller presented an invited plenary talk entitled, “Solar Variability Influences on the Earth’s Climate” at the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) 18th National Congress in Adelaide, Australia. For complete details, please accesshttp://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/specials/vertical/0,25402,11949,00.html.

Student News

The SoMAS Graduate Student Club (Carolyn, Bingbing, Stephanie, Xiaona and Zosia) is still seeking donations for this year’s holiday “potluck” party scheduled for Friday, December 12, at 5:00 p.m. in Endeavour Hall 120. Food and beverage donations are desperately needed. Further information and sign-up sheets are posted outside of the mail room in Endeavour Hall. If you are undecided as to what to bring, please sign up anyway. We need to have an accurate head-count as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation.

Congratulations to former ITPA graduate student, Jae Lee. Jae received her Ph.D. in August of this year and was recently hired as a Research Associate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Bingbing Wang will be taking his oral exam on Friday, December 12.

The SoMAS Graduate Student Club announces the first Okubo Distinguished Speaker, Dr. Farooq Azam from the University of California, San Diego. Mark your calendars for this special seminar scheduled for March 16, 2009.

Please remember to sign the attendance roster located in the Main Office.

Miscellaneous

The holiday gift, food and clothing drives are now underway. Please consider donating to those less fortunate. The food donation box is located in the mail room in Endeavour Hall. Clothing may be dropped off at Kim Knoll’s office (Discovery 155) and unwrapped toys may be dropped off in the ITPA office (Endeavour 129). Thank you in advance, and best wishes for a happy holiday season.

The Department of Geology, Geography, and Physics at the University of Tennessee at Martin is seeking to fill a tenure-track faculty position in meteorology/climatology at the Assistant/Associate Professor level. Further information may be obtained from the ITPA bulletin board in Endeavour Hall, or by contacting the Search Committee Chair, Mark Simpson, at msimpson@utm.edu.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Friday, December 5, 2008 by George E. Carroll

H A P P Y   H O L I D A Y S !

Schedules for the Topics in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (TAOS) seminars and Oceans and Atmospheres Colloquium (OAC) series for the Spring 2009 semester will be available in mid-January at http://atmos.msrc.sunysb.edu/npages/events.html.

Faculty News

On Friday, December 19 at 10:30 a.m., a delegation from the Chinese National Science Foundation will be visiting SoMAS. Faculty members are invited to attend this meeting in Endeavour 113, and to spend a few minutes talking about their research, and more broadly about where atmospheric/ocean sciences research is headed in the future. The Chinese Government is investing huge funds in science and this meeting may be an opportunity to build collaborations.

Professor Edmund Chang will be attending the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting in San Francisco, California from December 15-19.

Professors Sultan Hameed and Jawed Iqbal will also attend the AGU meeting and will make the following presentations:

• On December 18, “Changes in Hadley Circulation, Azores High and Winter Precipitation over East Africa.”
• On December 19, “Which is a Better Paradigm: Northern Annular Mode, North Atlantic Oscillation or Centers of action?”

Professor Edmund Chang will be offering a new special topics course for the Spring 2009 semester: General Circulation of the Atmosphere. The course will be two credits and will be graded S/U. For details, please contact Professor Chang at 2-6170.

As a reminder, if you plan to be out of town for the holidays, please write your name along with the dates on the “out of town” board in the ITPA office.

Student News

Special thanks to the SoMAS graduate student club for organizing this year’s holiday party, and also to the volunteers who signed up to donate food, set up the room, shop, decorate, etc. Your efforts are sincerely appreciated.

Miscellaneous

The holiday toy drive will end on Tuesday, December 16, at 5:00 p.m. Toys will be delivered to the Pt. Jefferson Food Pantry on the morning of December 17. New, unwrapped toys may be dropped off at the ITPA office, Endeavour Hall 129.

Those of you working in Endeavour Hall who would like to contribute toward a cash gift for Mae Johnson for the holidays, please see Gina Gartin in Endeavour Hall 129 before December 19.

Mark your calendars for the next Bay Scallop Bowl scheduled for Saturday, February 7th. Volunteers are needed for the following positions: moderator, rules judge, scorekeeper, science judge, timekeeper and runner. If you are able to assist us, please send an email to the volunteer coordinator, Tara Duffy, at bayscallop@yahoo.com. Please include your tee shirt size.

Faculty, staff and students are strongly encouraged to submit entries for the weekly ITPA E-newsletter. Please send your submissions to Gina Gartin at ggartin@notes.cc.sunysb.edu.

Page last modified on Thursday, December 11, 2008 by George E. Carroll