10:00AM Mountain Daylight Time
Members present: Allison Baker, Ben Johnson, Brad Klotz, Peter Sullivan, Carol Ruchti, Holger Vomel, Eric Apel, Kevin Pham, Mariana Cains, Olga Wihelmi, Peter Sullivan, Ryan Sobash, Lulin Xue
Also present: Glen Romine from the Directorate’s Office
Discussion with Glen Romine
Budget
Ended up with fairly positive budget news. Directorate operated on a flat budget for 2023-2024. Got a stronger than expected budget in January; however, this does not mean anything for the next fiscal year.
Strategic plan
There’s been progress on strategic plan. The plan is a required document for the cooperative agreement. The plan is a renewal of the previous plan so it maintains a similar focus on Earth System Predictability. The new plan will make priorities clearer, particularly strategic priorities which will include development of success metrics to help with accountability. The strategic priorities will be tied to existing activities and priorities (some money available for these pivots). The new base funding is closer to $120M/year (some of which was eaten by inflation). The base funding level allows for some flexibility to pivot to new priorities. We’re looking at sunsetting existing programs so we can prioritize to move forward. We got an incredible list of ideas from staff input. We can’t do most of them, however. Those that don’t have a clear path forward (including for lack of resources) may not end up in the strategic plan.
Organization
The current deputy director Scott McIntosh retired.* Looking for replacement for Scott and also for an assistant director of operations; expectations for reporting and compliance growing exponentially-requiring more staff, more attention to compliance.
*Editor’s note: Glen stated that Scott McIntosh retired, however, the announcement from Everette Joseph on June 24th, 2024 states that, “Scott McIntosh is resigning from his position to explore an exciting opportunity in the private sector.”
Memorandum of Understanding with NOAA
Close milestone is a MOU with NOAA working on it for about 2 years. NOAA has an interest in MPAS as the next-gen model for high resolution modeling applications. EPIC program is also potentially coming up for renewals. Looking at that opportunity.
NESTs
Has been an opportunity with NSF that has popped up with the Regional Resilience Innovation Incubator (R2I2) Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) and the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP). Has an idea of organizing activities over different parts of the country. Phase I of a multiphase opportunity. Mariana helped with report to NSF.
Community Software Facility
Paradigm shift to think about modeling ecosystem and tools as a facility. For example we have a have a facility budget for maintenance on a plane. This shift allows thinking about infrastructure to help maintain, modernize; may enable more resources; important to maintain alignment between existing software and evolving hardware; also needed to deal with community contributions-processes/protocols in place for accepting and incorporating those contributions, needs to be maintainable and supportable for the community. Misalignment of software and evolution of hardware. Misalignment creates organizational risk and exposure. Take that threat seriously to modernize our software. Also deal with community contributions. Need guidelines and structures that deal with how to incorporate new software. Build some sense of formality within this facility concept. We want robust user support; lower barrier for community use.
INFORM Project
Conceptualizing the use of instrument or a collection of instruments to answer science questions; integrating observations and modeling; foci on land-atmosphere and ocean-atmosphere. For example: the APAR system on the C-130. Once the hardware is on plane, how do we best use it? How do we maximize use such as flight paths so we can address unique research questions?
SHINE
Hiring initiative, unclear where focus is going to be, initially thinking early-career opportunity space; likely connected to science initiatives (e.g., earth system predictability across timescales, or maybe a cohort around a specific problem/activity); available early FY25; several cohorts ideally, comfortable with an initial cohort but not sure about an initial cohort; 5 year positions, 3 years of base support + 2 years insured by lab; can be filled by existing staff. Link to Sundog reference page.
Question and Answer with Glen
Question: You mentioned the budget was a little better than expected. In terms of what you expected and what we will get. Significant change or marginal?
What we did was we structured the current cooperative agreement differently. Asked for cost of business, 3% increase year to year. In past cooperative agreements, we’ve been flat. What we didn’t get fully was a separate budget set aside for infrastructure. There was a big investment in infrastructure we tried to target that apportionment. One of the targeted areas was to address improvements on the planes, for example, in the C-130 the windows are single pane, HVAC is original. We’d like to upgrade those aspects of the planes. Another infrastructure priority is related to how RAF got big upgrade in facilities, except for the hangar.
Clarification about RISE RFP
The RFP divides the country into predetermined regions. Not every region would get an award however.
Happy to see opportunity for early career for poster session. Not sure where that came from. Where does the direction of the day of discovery come from? The NSA-EC hears about things. Should we be involved further?
Desire for more opportunities for poster session had been made by other folks. That’s why we put it in there. Glen and Bill plan the Day of Discovery. Both of us have terrible schedules. People wanted fewer long talks and more lightning talks. Changes based on feedback we hear. Overall topic is focused on rate of coordination and collaboration between NCAR and UCP. Try to be inclusive because UCAR pays for most of the Day of Discovery.
Can you elaborate on NOAA’s interest in MPAS?
Designed as a global model, can also be run as a regional model. FV3 was originally a climate model that was brought down to applications at convective scale. As GFDL took FV3 down to small scales needed for convective scale, performance is worse. Made a lot of progress and not where they want it to be. Rapid Refresh Forecasting System (RRFS) is leading the way. RRFS is going to start exploring MPAS as a candidate model for the system. Have some experimental systems such as the Warn on Forecast System. The Warn on Forecast System already uses MPAS and DART but it’s not an operational system. HAFS designed for hurricane forecasts. They are content with the performance of FV3.
Clarification: INFORM project is using MPAS.
There is an MPAS interface for JEDI. WOFS uses DART.
For strategic plan, is staff input complete? What’s the timeline?
Going through a gated process. Complete set of suggestions from staff input is down-selected to smaller set. Hoping to have final draft sometime around December. Current draft is about 30 pages. Plan is to cut down to 15 pages.
Do you know FTE related to SHINE?
Intent is to have several cohorts of hires around strategic activities. While we feel comfortable with an initial cohort, we’re not sure about future cohorts. 3 years of base support, 2 years of labs would have to ensure.
Last year we talked about making a small funding request to support activities. Just FYI to Glen, the NSA-EC will be submitting a request to plan events to enable representatives to rebuild connections with labs.
Vote to selecting permanent co-chairs for the NSA-EC
Ben moves and Holger seconds to select chairs for NSA-EC. Unanimous support to select Kelley and Ben as co-chairs by members present. Note: Allison Baker and Eric Apel logged off meeting prior to vote due to conflicting meetings on their schedules.
Action items
NSA-EC will collect suggestions for lightning talks and will pass the list up to Glen by one or two weeks-established by mid-September.