Paul Hamer, an employee of CIRA in Boulder, has been instrumental in developing and supporting the Object Data System (ODS) software architecture that underlies the success of the Central Facility data system of the NOAA ESRL Global Systems Division (GSD). As a result of Paul's work, the ODS methods routinely and reliably accommodate ingest data formats such as GOES GVAR, WSR-88D Level-II, GRIB Edition-1 and -2, BUFR and ASCII. Paul's leadership in developing ODS has provided GSD with an asset that is the foundation upon which many of GSD's successful projects rely.

Andrea Schumacher, an employee of CIRA in Fort Collins, worked as part of a NESDIS team on the development and transition of a new operational NESDIS product for estimating the probability of tropical cyclone formation. Andrea took the lead on generalizing the product to include the central and western north Pacific, and at present the final product is in the final stages of transition to NESDIS operations. The NOAA members of the NESDIS team on which Andrea worked, received the NOAA Bronze Medal for their work. (Unfortunately Andrea could not receive this same honor because she was not an employee of NOAA.)

Jeff Smith, an employee of CIRA in Boulder, has significantly impacted the Global Systems Division in respect to web applications, web services,and java programming. He led the design and development of Weather Research and Forecast Domain Wizard, (a graphical tool used to define the spatial domanin needed to run the new WRF Pre-processor System), he helped to design and develop the WRF Portal (a java application which allows users to develop, configure, run, and monitor the execution of complex WRF model workflows), he developed a java training course for the ESRL staff, and he won a web award for his work on Data Locator (a web services based data access and display cabability, which was an inegral part of exploratory work on the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Coverage Service).

The following nomination for GSD Team Member of the Month - December 2007 comes from Aviation Branch Chief Mike Kraus.

The following nomination for GSD Team Member of the Month – November 2007 comes from Information Systems Branch Chief Carl Bullock.

"I am nominating Leigh Cheatwood-Harris for GSD's November 2007 Team Member of the Month. Leigh has supported a number of important evaluation and training activities in ISB over the past several months. Two of particular note were her work with the AWIPS II development and GFE training for River Forecast Center forecasters.

For AWIPS II, Leigh was persistent in working with the version 1.0 despite many problems typical of a first release of software. She became the de-facto expert on this system helping others learn and use AWIPS II. She also developed test metrics which will be used to evaluate the new AWIPS II system. This development included compiling and evaluating usage logs, interacting with NWS staff at the Boulder forecast office, and running and documenting performance tests. These metrics will form the basis of comparing the performance of the new AWIPS II system.

She has also played a key role for developing and testing training material for initial GFE training conducted with River Forecast Center forecasters from across the nation. She meticulously went through training material before training began and suggested changes to the material in order to make it more meaningful to participants during training. She also assisted during training and answered questions during lab exercises. These contributions helped lead to a successful training experience for the participants, most of whom had little prior experience with the GFE."

This new site provides a search engine for finding GRIB and NetCDF meteorological data here at GSD. Employing a web coverage service (WCS) to return subsets of desired data in NetCDF format, the Data Locator web application can either return this data as a downloaded NetCDF file (.nc), or it can generate web pages for viewing the data in a web browser or from within Google Earth. A web service is also available for other applications to invoke in order to find and retrieve this data.

The GSD ITS Operations staff have long relied upon FICS to assist them in monitoring the various systems in support of the research projects here at GSD/ESRL. "Fido", short for FICS Docs, is an add-on to FICS used to store and manage the detailed information pages associated with these systems. With Fido, operators are now able to edit, add, and delete information pages as well as view an archive of previous versions. The primary users of the system like it so well that they have expressed a desire to move all of their documentation to this new system.

GSD Director Steve Koch stated that:

CSU Professor to Chair Section of National Academy Dr. Tom Vonder Haar, University Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, has been elected Chairman of the Interdisciplinary Section of the National Academy of Engineering. The Academies of Engineering and Science and the Institute of Medicine were founded by President Abraham Lincoln to serve as advisors to the Nation. The Interdisciplinary Section includes 140 Academicians from industry, research laboratories and the university community.

Vonder Haar was named to the Academy in 2003. He joined CSU faculty Larry Roesner, Civil Engineering, George Seidel, Jr., Biomedical Sciences, and Barry Beaty, Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology in this honor. CSU faculty emeritus Jack Cermack and A. Ray Chamberlain, Civil Engineering, with Albert Meyers and Marshall Fixman, Chemistry, are also active members of the Academy.

Please join in congratulating Jebb Stewart and Glen Liston who each were presented the CIRA Research Initiative Award for 2007! This honor acknowledges their contributions to the overall research environment at CIRA. The staff in Boulder gathered to honor Jebb, and we will honor Glen at our next Coffee Confab on August 22.

Jebb was behind the system design and technical leadership necessary in the development of enabling technology for the Gridded FX-Net system. The system has since been adopted by operational fire weather forecasters working for the National Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Interagency Fire Center. The data provided by the system is essential to daily fire prediction forecasts.

Glen is well known among his peers for his innovative blowing snow model. His modeling suite represents a tremendous advance forward in the field, and he has been sought after as a collaborator on a number of projects (including treks across Canada and the Antarctic) both here and abroad. Snow research promises to be a growing area thanks to the expertise and reputation Glen brings to CIRA.

The following nomination comes from Technology Outreach Branch Chief Bill Bendel.

"Mike Biere - Technology Outreach Branch/Science On a Sphere® Senior Software Engineer - is designated as GSD's Team Member of the Month for June 2007. He is receiving this in recognition for superb efforts in furthering the SOS mission. In particular: contributing innovative ideas on improving the current SOS system; continuing to support customers at many sites with real time answers; providing training during the installation of SOS systems at several museums and science centers; developing the software for the five projector configuration for SOS; and interacting with vendors, suppliers, and sphere builders to get the work done right and on time."

Kevin received the award based on his significant participation on the NOAA Research and Development High Performance Computing System Procurement as well as his continuing superior performance on collaborative research with NOAA/RDTL GSD’s Assimilation and Modeling Branch.

Louie Grasso and Manajit Sengupta received the award for their outstanding work on the GOES-R Project.

Dr. Shripad Deo, a CIRA Research Associate based in Kansas City, MO with our National Weather Service Central Region Headquarters colleagues, was recently recognized with a Regional Excellence Award. The focus of Dr. Deo’s research has been in trying to help the NWS communicate with the public more clearly and effectively. In this project, the goal was to develop a web portal that would allow the lay public access to NWS information without being overwhelmed. With help from the webmaster, the project was completed in June of 2006.

The NOAA 2007 Environmental Hero Awards were presented by retired Navy Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, Ph.D., Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 20, 2007.

Nolan Doesken was one of ten recipients of the prestigious award. "Doesken organized a network of citizen volunteers to measure and report precipitation from their homes following a flash flood that killed five people in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1997. Starting with a few volunteers in 1998, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) network involves thousands of volunteers in 17 states, and enhances the forecasting and warning capabilities of the NOAA National Weather Service."

Congratulations go out to Jim Frimel for his selection as one of the recipients of this year's CSU Distinguished Administrative Professional Award. This annual award recognizes administrative professionals for continuing meritorious and outstanding achievement in outreach, teaching, administration and/or research at CSU.

Jim is being recognized for his key leadership of several high visibility research projects, including the FAA- and NWS-sponsored Volcanic Ash Coordination Tool project that recently received the 2006 NOAA Bronze Medal. He was presented his award at the Celebrate Colorado State! Luncheon on April 26 at the Lory Student Center.

Congratulations to Don Reinke on his selection as recipient of this year's College of Engineering Distinguished Administrative Professional Award for his exceptional performance as Leader of the CloudSat Data Processing activity since 2001. CloudSat is a NASA-managed cloud imaging satellite that has been making unique vertical structure measurements since June 2006.

Don was presented his award at the annual College of Engineering Visual Arts and College Awards Reception held April 12th.

Evan Polster was named GSD’s December 2006 Team Member of the Month. Evan serves as the Technology Outreach Branch programmer Analyst for the FX-Net Technology. He was recognized for his outstanding efforts in furthering the FX-Net activities including: contributing innovative ideas on improving recent FX-Net Client updates; working hard to meet many development and software release deadlines; maintaining the Starteam software version control system and the FX-Net group Wiki site; and providing Java development leadership.

At the annual NWS Incident Meteorologist (IMET) Workshop in Boise, Idaho during the week of March 12, 2007, the National Weather Service Director, Brig. General D.L. Johnson, USAF (Ret.), presented ‘Certificates of Recognition’ to two members of the FX-Net project team. Sher Schranz, Project Manager, and Jebb Stewart, Development Lead, received the award.

The National Weather Service has implemented an All Hazards Onsite Meteorological Support System to provide data and communications to the NWS Incident Meteorologists (IMETS) at remote locations. The core component of the system is the NOAA ESRL/GSD’s FX-NET system. FX-NET provides AWIPS-like displays on the IMET laptop while retrieving real-time atmospheric data from remote data servers. FX-NET has been deployed to hundreds of fires during the last four fire weather seasons, and to other events such as Katrina clean-up support, oil spills and national political conventions. FX-Net delivers high-resolution satellite, radar, observational and weather prediction model data utilizing unique compression technology and state of the art, cross-platform display software.

CIRA Research Associate Jeff Smith was recognized at the NOAA/Global Systems Division (GSD) Christmas party this past December (2006) with a web award for "Best New Site." Jeff’s creation, called "JavaZone" was created as a supplement to Jeff’s Java class for the Earth Systems Research Laboratory (NOAA) in Boulder, CO. However, it has taken on a life of its own and become a valuable resource for many GSD developers who weren’t able to take the class. The site is fun, clever and user-friendly. Power Point training slides, Java programming exercises, downloads, links and a "fun stuff" category are all provided on the site. Jeff’s well-designed and well-coded site is GSD’s Best New Site of 2006.

Poster Award for Use of WRF Portal to Support the Developmental Testbed Center

The ESRL/Global Systems Division's GPS-Met team received the 2006 Department of Commerce Gold Medal for its development of Global Positioning System (GPS) meteorology, a new low cost, upper-air observing system that uses GPS to continuously measure the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Although only Federal employees are eligible for this award, CIRA Research Associate Tracy Smith was a key member of the team that successfully demonstrated new applications for GPS meteorology that are essential to NOAA's Integrated Earth Observing System/Global Earth Observing System of Systems. Their efforts have advanced weather forecasting, climate monitoring, and atmospheric research by providing a new way to monitor atmospheric water vapor.

Tracy was also one of the coauthors on a paper selected as one of the 2005 OAR Outstanding Scientific Paper Awards announced in June. The award-winning paper, "An Hourly Assimilation-Forecast Cycle: The RUC," was published in Monthly Weather Review. This paper describes the analysis system utilized within the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) and discusses some issues associated with high-frequency data assimilation cycling. The RUC is an operational NCEP weather forecast system Tracy helped develop as part of the GSD Assimilation and Modeling Branch.

On the web: the website for GPS-Met is http://gpsmet.noaa.gov/jsp/index.jsp
for the RUC (now known as Rapid Refresh) is http://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/
A copy of the MWR paper can be found at: http://www-frd.fsl.noaa.gov/pub/papers/Benjamin2004c/j.pdf

Dr. Tom Vonder Haar, University Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of CIRA, has been elected Chairman of the Interdisciplinary Section of the National Academy of Engineering. The Academies of Engineering and Science and the Institute of Medicine were founded by President Abraham Lincoln to serve as advisors to the Nation. The Interdisciplinary Section includes 140 Academicians from industry, research laboratories and the university community.

Vonder Haar was named to the Academy in 2003. He joined CSU faculty Larry Roesner, Civil Engineering, George Seidel, Jr., Biomedical Sciences, and Barry Beaty, Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology in this honor. CSU faculty emeritus Jack Cermack and A. Ray Chamberlain, Civil Engineering, with Albert Meyers and Marshall Fixman, Chemistry, are also active members of the Academy.

A NASA Group Achievement Award was presented to the CSU-CIRA Team comprised of Kenneth Eis, Phil Partain, Dale Reinke, Donald Reinke, Laura Sample, and Michael Hiatt for "exceptional contributions to the CloudSat mission in the design, development and implementation of the CloudSat Data Processing System." CloudSat launched on April 28th, 2006 and the Data Processing Center has processed 100% of the data collected by the instrument since it became operational on June 2nd 2006.

A formal announcement of this award was made at the awards ceremony at JPL on June 21st. Phil Partain traveled to JPL to accept the Award for the DPC. Phil is an employee of Science Technology Corporation, METSAT Division and is working under a subcontract to CIRA as the CloudSat Data Processing Center System Engineering and Operations Manager.