User Program Practices
NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH
AN NSF FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER
LORY WINGATE
UCAR SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT/
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER
Outline
• Community
• Services
• Challenges
• Performance Measures
– Alignment with Facility Mission, User Satisfaction, Outreach
UCAR – SCIENCE AMPLIFIER & MULTIPLIER
• Nonprofit founded in 1960 by 14 universities
• Manages NCAR on behalf of NSF and the university
community
• Offers Community Programs in response to requests (UCP)
• Serves as a hub for community discussion and action
• Provides national leadership across academia, government labs, private sector
NCAR – RESEARCH, FACILITIES & SERVICES
weather • water • space weather climate • air quality
Earth system
• Collaborative research
• World-class computer models
• Supercomputing
• Observing systems & sensors
• Field campaigns
• Education & outreach
UCAR’s COMMUNITY PROGRAMS
• Education
K-12 students & teachers Undergrads & grad students
• Professional training
Courses & workshops Online, self-paced
• Scientific data & services
Geoscience data, plus analysis tools COSMIC satellite data
• Scientific program support
Events management Workforce management Long-term partnerships
RESEARCH FACILITIES
• NCAR-Wyoming
Supercomputing Center
• Aircraft, satellites, and sensors
• Community-led computer models (climate, weather, chemical,
solar)
• Mauna Loa Solar Observatory (Hawaii)
• OpenSky.ucar.edu (NCAR Library online)
RESEARCH TOOLS
CUTTING-EDGE OBSERVATIONS: Airborne Phased-Array Radar
COMMUNITY EARTH SYSTEM MODEL: CESM
Simulating past and present climates, projecting trends
• Global atmospheric model
• Incorporates land, ocean, sea ice, atmosphere
• Decadal to centennial prediction
UNDERSTANDING EARTH AS A COUPLED SYSTEM
NCAR and partners developing new kinds of observational and modeling capabilities
• Space weather – to mitigate impacts on satellite networks and the power grid
• Air quality and airborne hazards – to protect
lives
• Hurricanes and severe
storms – for earlier warnings
• Climate, from seasons to centuries – for resource
planners and decision makers
COAST-TO-COAST PREDICTION: WRF-HYDRO
New capability:
National Water Intelligence
• The underlying modeling architecture for the NOAA National Water Model
• Funders: NSF, NOAA, NASA
• Partners: CUAHSI universities, USGS, Israel Hydrologic
Service, Baron
EDUCATION & TRAINING
Online courses
• State of the science
• For professionals and advanced students meted.ucar.edu
STEM resources
• Pre-college and informal learning
scied.ucar.edu SOARS
• Hands-on research internships, mentoring, community building, diversifying science
soars.ucar.edu
OUR COMBINED STRENGTH
• A national touchstone for research, education, and advanced technology development
• Budget: ~$217 million
• Staff: ~1,330
• Locations:
• Colorado
• Wyoming
• Hawaii
• Washington, D.C.
UCAR MEMBER COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES
NCAR Measurements
• Operational measurements typically fall into these primary measurement categories:
– Science and Science Support
• Community
• Impact & Reach
– Financial Performance
• Most not longitudinal
A Center of Scientific Excellence and Innovation NCAR Community
• 119 community events hosted: 43 workshops, 17 tutorials, five
symposia, six conferences, and 48 colloquia
• 779 visitors from 333 different institutions located in 43 U.S.
states and 14 countries.
• 805 peer-reviewed publications in FY 2018, 90% were published in collaboration with authors at
other institutions.
• 181 NCAR staff served on 535 external committees for national and international scientific,
education, and governmental
organizations
NCAR Impact and Reach - Demographics
• 212 NCAR staff delivered approximately 1,000 oral presentations at conferences across the U.S. and abroad
• 96 NCAR staff made more than 140 poster presentations globally
• NCAR staff served as graduate advisors or
committee members for 210 graduate students.
Twenty-one of those are working on their M.S.
degree and 189 are working on their Ph.D.
NCAR Impact and Reach –
Models, Supercomputer, Observing Facilities
FIELD CAMPAIGNS
• Provided support in seven field campaigns
• durations that ranged from 60 to 1,318 operational field days
• included a total of 40 institutions; 26 of those being UCAR member institutions.
• involved 42 investigators, 34
undergraduate students, and 72 graduate students.
• Percentage of scientific objectives that were achieved through the field campaigns 91- 100%.
• Percentage of PIs rating NCAR/EOL’s support of campaigns as Excellent or Very Good in these surveys was greater than 90%.
• Percentage of PIs rating NCAR/EOL-provided services for campaigns as Essential or Very Important was greater than 90%.
MODELS
• 836 publications based on research using the WRF model, and the annual average for the past five years (2014 -
2018) is 728 publications per year.
SUPERCOMPUTING
• Supported more than 1,700 unique users at nearly 300 universities and other institutions
• university user community reported more than 550
publications and nearly 70 dissertations that resulted from the use of NCAR resources and services.
MAUNA LOA SOLAR OBSERVATORY
• Supported more than 1,700 unique users at 18 new HAO registrations and 321 external
registrants (non-HAO).
• 181 unique institutions registered to use the new system.
NCAR IMPACT AND REACH- EDUCATION AND PUBLIC OUTREACH
• Forty- five NCAR Staff worked with K-12 students from 58 schools or other school-based organizations.
●
Teaching appointments at
institutions of higher education currently number 29. Twelve
percent of these occurred abroad, in five different countries; 88%
took place in 11 U.S. states.
●
79 staff members taught at a total of 134 workshops, tutorials, and
colloquia. In all, NCAR staff taught 493 individual classes, with class sizes ranging from three to 1,000 people. Sixteen percent of these events occurred in 10 countries around the world, including Brazil
and South Korea; 84% took place in nine U.S. states.
● At the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) workshop, there were 96 participants including NCAR|UCAR staff. The participants were mostly REU site PIs who manage internships. There
were 70 NSF-funded REU PIs, 12 other faculty (mostly from Minority Serving Institutions), two NSF
Program Officers, ten NCAR|UCAR staff members, and a few PIs from other institutions.
