To: Atmospheric Sciences faculty, students, and staff. From: Greg Hakim. Subject: 2008 UCAR Members Meeting. On 14-15 October I attended the UCAR Annual Members Meeting as a representative of the University of Washington. In accordance with my responsibilities as a Members Representative, I am sending this email to report to you on the activities of this meeting. As I have done in previous reports, I'll preface my summary with a little background for those of you not familiar with UCAR; you may skip to the next paragraph if you're familiar with UCAR. UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) is a non-profit corporation that has, among other things, a term contract with the NSF to oversee NCAR. UCAR has a board of directors, called Trustees, that manage the business of UCAR by interacting with the executives of the corporation. These Trustees are elected by representatives of the stakeholders, who are the member institutions that pay dues for these privileges. The annual meeting provides the opportunity for members to elect Trustees and receive briefings on the activities of UCAR and NCAR during the past year. The meeting began with a series of reports, the first of which was from the UCAR treasurer. Of NCAR's 2008 (2007) total annual budget of $300M ($282M), $159M ($160M) comes from NSF. Although the total budget is up about 6% in the past year, most of that was for subcontracts where the money left NCAR. NSF's contribution to the overall budget is about 51%, compared to 53% in 2007. Major new sources of funds in 2008 include $37M in RAL, including contracts with Weather Modification, Inc, Saudi Arabia, and Australia, and $32M in EOL. Cliff Jacobs from NSF discussed the budget situation at NSF, which in 2008 went from an expected 10% increase to +1% for all of NSF, and +0% for ATM. For 2009, the Whitehouse requests a 13.6% increase, but that is viewed as an upper bound, and unlikely to be resolved until well into the next calendar year. He then reviewed 10-year funding statistics across NSF, the Geosciences directorate, and the Atmospheric Sciences division (ATM). There's been a 50% increase in proposals over that time period agency wide, with the success rate declining from 30% to 22%. The average duration of an award is 3 years, with an annual budget of $140K. Currently, ATM receives a total of 800 proposals per year; Earth Science and Oceanography receive about 50% more proposals. The success rate at ATM has declined over the 10-year period from 50% to 40%, which compares with 25% in Earth Science and Oceanography. An important internal statistic is the fraction of PIs that must write three proposals to get one funded. In ATM that number is 12%, compared with 30% agency wide. Trends for women and new PIs are broadly similar. UCAR President Rick Anthes discussed the impact of the budget in NCAR, and the new management team. Eric Barron became director of NCAR in July, and appointed Maura Hagan Assistant Director (she remains ASP director as well). The flat budget for the past few years have hurt science at NCAR, including layoffs, and scientists leaving. Science ran an article on the impact of lost talent on climate modeling at NCAR. Rick made the case that science internally has been hard hit in part because there have been no cuts in support to the community. Over an unspecified period of time (last few years?) there have been 58 positions terminated and 79 vacancies left unfilled. Given the uncertainty in the budget it is very hard to plan. Actions to address the budget problems include lobbying in DC, and fighting the perception that "climate science is done, and now it's time for policy." The new NCAR supercomputer facility is still in the works, but nothing definitive was discussed and it is unclear if any progress has been made in the last year (not a good sign). A new NCAR strategic plan is in the works, as is a UCAR workforce management plan. Rather than report on NCAR's activities over the past year, new Director Eric Barron focused instead on the key issues he's been working on during the past three months. Much of that time has been spent talking with leaders within NCAR and seeking feedback. Some themes have emerged for the new strategic plan: imperatives (what NCAR needs to do to be successful), frontiers (new directions that need investment), and fabric (community building and mentoring). He emphasized the need for clear, actionable priorities. Aspects of NCAR under review include the managements structure, which expanded at the expense of science with the last reorganization, and the institutes within NCAR, which are very different. External relationships are also under review, including graduate students, postdocs, and visitors. With 18 advisory groups that report to the Director, it is unclear if messages are filtering upward effectively, and this will be streamlined for transparency and greater access. Reporting within NCAR also seems excessive, with 100 page annual reports; it is unclear if these are read. He plans for transparency on the financial health of the institution, and to hold regular "town meetings." Management will be reviewed regularly with feedback and standards for accountability. The notion of tenure, thought to be implicit by the community, was brought into question with the recent firing of senior scientists. That issue was put to rest: there is no tenure at NCAR, but there is "job security." Overall, I was very impressed by Eric's command of the issues at NCAR, and I'm optimistic about his ability to steer the institution through very difficult times. A review of the budget situation in DC left little room for optimism. A "big picture" review of the federal budget showed that 62% is devoted to entitlements, 22% to defense, and 16% to discretionary items like science. Of that 16%, 50% is defense related. Although science has held up well, with few major cuts, that has come at the expense of social programs. This is becoming a hard sell, with science viewed as a "like to have" rather than a "must have." Forecasting specifics is very difficult until the election has passed. The panel this year concerned climate mitigation and adaptation. Two featured speakers set the agenda for both aspects, and then breakout groups focused on separate topics. One of the more interesting statistics concerned the number of climate-change bills in Congress, with 235 bills introduced in 2007-2008. One of the most prominent, Lieberman-Warner, was a cap-and-trade bill, proposing a 70% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. The bill did not come up for a vote, but had support from about 35-40 senators. No matter who becomes president, the expectation is that they will propose a cap-and-trade bill in the first half of 2009. This will likely conflict with "bottom up" cap-trade activity that has developed regionally in the absence of leadership at the Federal level. These initiatives include broad adoption of California's greenhouse gas emissions standards for automobiles by many Western, and Eastern states, and regional cap-trade activity. A list of needs for the research community include: regional climate modeling, information delivery to stakeholders (accessible to public), and an evaluation of geoengineering risks and options. That's all for this year. You may find several of the presentations at http://www.ucar.edu/governance/meetings/oct08/ along with other information about the meeting. As always, I welcome your comments, and issues that you would like me to address in the future.