COOPERATIVE INSTITUTE FOR MESOSCALE METEOROLOGICAL STUDIES (CIMMS)

ACCOMPLISHMENTS DURING CALENDAR YEAR 1995

INFRASTRUCTURAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Memorandum of Agreement between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Oklahoma (OU) was revised and expanded to add the participation and sponsorship of NOAA's National Weather Service to the long-standing involvement of the NOAA Environmental Research Laboratories. This new Agreement, which provides for a significant enhancement of CIMMS, was subsequently approved and signed by the Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere, NOAA, U.S. Department of Commerce (Dr. D. James Baker) and the OU President (David L. Boren).
Preparation and approval of a new CIMMS Five-Year Plan for 1996-2001. Consistent with the above new NOAA-OU Agreement, this Five-Year Plan is providing for interactions and collaborations with, and funding from, the National Weather Service units on the OU campus (Forecast Office, WSR-88D Operational Support Facility, Storm Prediction Center) as well as the traditional counterpart involvement with the National Severe Storms Laboratory of NOAA's Environmental Research Laboratories. The research themes to be pursued during the next five years have accordingly also been significantly enhanced, and now include basic convective and mesoscale research, forecast improvements, the climatic effects of/controls on mesoscale processes, the socioeconomic effects of mesoscale weather systems and regional-scale climate variations, and Doppler weather radar research and development.

SUCCESSFUL PROGRAM REVIEWS

During March 1-2, all CIMMS programs were subject to a comprehensive multi-year review by the CIMMS external Advisory Board.
During November 27-29, an external Site Advisory Committee conducted a multi-year review of the CIMMS "Site Scientist" program for the Southern Great Plains component of the U.S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program. This CIMMS program, which commenced in 1992, had previously been renewed for 1996-1999.
The reports of both review panels were strongly supportive of the CIMMS activities to date, and also offered constructive suggestions for the further enhancement of our programs.

INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES

The following activities occurred under a Memorandum of Agreement between CIMMS and the Moroccan Direction de la Meteorologie Nationale (DMN) -- two DMN engineers were in residence performing research into the causes and predictability of Moroccan growing season precipitation; the CIMMS Director arranged for a Moroccan Ministerial invitation to, and the participation of a Moroccan delegation in, the "International Forum on Forecasting El Nino: Launching an International Research Institute" (Washington, DC, November); the CIMMS Director visited Morocco in June and October to give invited presentations at national and international workshops and symposia; the DMN Deputy Director visited CIMMS in November to review current collaborations and plan for future joint programs.
As part of developing, funded collaborations with Japanese private and public sector organizations, CIMMS hosted visits from representatives of the Kyushu Electric Power Company, Weathernews International (Tokyo), the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center, and Hitachi, Ltd. Feasibility investigations concerning the potential of Doppler radars to provide severe weather warnings in Japan were conducted for the Kyushu Electric Power Company and Weathernews International. Substantial progress was also made on preparation of the Proceedings from the UJST Workshop on the Technology of Disaster Prevention Against Severe Local Storms, which was co-hosted by CIMMS in late 1994 as part of the U.S.-Japan Science and Technology Agreement. These Proceedings are being compiled by the CIMMS Director and a CIMMS Director Emeritus.
CIMMS agreed to cosponsor the Joint US-Korea Workshop on Storm- and Mesoscale Analysis and Prediction, and participated in the planning for that February 1996 event.
In addition to the above collaborations, CIMMS Scientists are actively working with counterparts at Ben-Gurion University (Israel), the Instituto per lo studio delle Metodologie Geofisiche Ambientali (IMGA, Italy), the National Climate Center and Institute of Atmospheric Physics (P. R. China), the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (Russia), and the Queensland Department of Primary Industry (Australia).

INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL FIELD PROGRAM LEADERSHIP

As part of our ARM "Site Scientist" role, CIMMS Scientists provided vital day-to-day scientific guidance for the development and operation of the Southern Great Plains ARM Locale, which extends across southern Kansas and northern and central Oklahoma. This site became fully operational during 1995, with the total instrumentation complement being valued at $15,000,000. Other ARM Locales will soon be established in the tropical western Pacific and on the North Slope of Alaska.
CIMMS Fellows and Scientists planned and directed the 1995 Verification of the Origin of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment (VORTEX) across the Southern Great Plains, for which they also designed and built several special, mobile, observing systems. Unique tornado measurements made by those observing systems are presented in a forthcoming Science paper that is considered to be of sufficient importance to be featured on the cover of that leading journal.
A CIMMS Fellow and CIMMS Scientists began installing instrumentation that will permit the routine monitoring of soil water and temperature across the above Southern Great Plains ARM Locale. When completed in 1996, this 23-station network will be the world-leader for the regional- scale monitoring of these important environmental parameters. This effort is part of the World Climate Programme's Global Energy and Water Cycle EXperiment (GEWEX) as well as the aforementioned international ARM Program of the U.S. Department of Energy.

SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION AND ACTIVITY

The traditional core emphasis of CIMMS on mesoscale and convective weather systems has been further developed through the following "cutting edge" activities -- participation in the above VORTEX program and the associated development and deployment of unique mobile observing systems; theoretical advances concerning the treatment of pronounced physical discontinuities in storm simulations; the development of algorithms for severe weather detection by the nationwide WSR-88D radar system; the completion of a graduate-level text on The Electrical Nature of Storms to be published by Oxford University Press in 1996; and development of an experimental Warning Decision Support System that was tested in National Weather Service Offices around the country and is expected to be utilized operationally during 1996.
The following newer areas of CIMMS activity were strongly developed -- quantification of socioeconomic effects of mesoscale weather systems and regional-scale climate variations; development and application of multivariate spatial statistics to weather and climate problems; fine-resolution modeling of microphysical and radiative processes within clouds; regional-scale climatic controls on/effects of mesoscale weather systems; and observational and modeling investigations of regional climate variability. These efforts are not only pioneering with respect to the history of meteorological research on the OU Campus, but are at the national and international forefront.
During 1995, the external funding for CIMMS totaled $3.5 million, and supported research that was reported in 38 refereed journal articles, approximately 50 papers that appeared in conference Proceedings, and many further articles that were accepted for 1996 publication in refereed journals.
During 1995, CIMMS Scientists and Fellows presented invited papers at national and international meetings in Belem (Brazil), Vina del Mar (Chile), Melbourne (Australia), Wellington (New Zealand), Rabat (Morocco), the Balearic Islands (Spain), and Trieste, Florence, and Sardinia (Italy), and gave contributed papers at some of the above meetings and at others in Cork (Ireland), Tokyo, Beijing, and in several U.S. locations.