The metrics featured below offer qualitative and quantitative measurements and assessments of the productivity, quality, and impacts that NCAR staff, programs and activities have on our research community, sponsors, and society in general for data reported in the Metrics Database, Workday and iVantage HRIS systems and OpenSky Database as of October 31, 2019 for fiscal year 2019 (October 1, 2018 - September 30, 2019). Staff continue to update their entries and expand their contributions throughout the year so visit the Metrics Database for the most current data. (2019 METRICS AS OF OCTOBER 31, 2019). Date stamp 10/30/19.
In FY19, a total of 138 events were hosted: 31 workshops, 62 tutorials, 42 conferences, and 3 colloquia with an average audience of 34 colleagues per event and estimated total audience of 13,250. Event co-sponsor groups included Colorado State University, the National Science Foundation and the Clean-Air Society of Australia and New Zealand, to name a few.
Date Range | Total Hosted | Workshops | Tutorials | Conferences | Colloquia |
FY19 | 138 | 31 | 62 | 42 | 3 |
NCAR’s geosciences research facilities, instrumentation and field support services support field campaigns around the globe.
Date Range | Total Campaigns | Institutions | PIs | Undergraduate Students | Graduate Students |
FY19 | 6 | 98 | 42 | 65 | 80 |
In FY19, NCAR participated in six field campaigns ranging in duration from 87 to 986 operational field days. A total of 98 institutions, including 20 UCAR member institutions participated in these campaigns. The projects involved 42 investigators, 65 undergraduate students, and 80 graduate students. The field campaigns for FY19 are:
Campaign Acronym | Campaign Full Name |
SAVANT | Stable Atmospheric Variabilitiy and Transport |
RELAMPAGO | Remote sensing of Electrification, Lightning, And Mesoscale/microscale Processes with Adaptive Ground Observations |
OTREC | Organization of Tropical East Pacific Convection |
Eclipse 2019 | Observations of 2019 Eclipse |
CHEESEHEAD | Chequamegon Heterogeneous Ecosystem Energy-balance Study Enabled by a High-density Extensive Array of Detectors |
FIREX-AQ | Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality |
One example is the Stable Atmospheric Variabilitiy and Transport (SAVANT) project, an NSF sponsored field campaign focused on quantifying the effects of converging shallow cold air drainage and background flow on aerosols transport and dispersion. The novel aspect of this work was the ability to identify turbulent events and features with aerosol lidars to add the missing spatial component to our current understanding.
Each year, NCAR facilities host tours organized for a specific organization or group. This year, NCAR hosted a total of 114 tours, between the NCAR-Wyoming Supercenter, the NCAR Research Aviation Facility, the High Altitude Observatory, EOL laboratory and the Mesa Lab.
NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer
The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer Center (NWSC) is based in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The Center provides advanced computing services to scientists studying a broad range of disciplines, including weather, climate, oceanography, air pollution, space weather, computational science, energy production, and carbon sequestration. The Center is open to the public for self-guided tours, field trips for school groups, and non-school group special tours. In FY19, the Center received 922 walk-in public visitors, and averaged 83 visitors per month.
Date Range | Hosted Tours | K-12 Groups | Science/Technical Tours | College/University Groups | Political/Sponsor Groups | Peer Center |
FY19 | 72 | 19 | 17 | 21 | 7 | 3 |
NWSC hosted 72 tours in FY19, for groups ranging in size from 1 to 400 people. Nineteen tours were for K-12 groups, including Afflerbach Elementary School (Colorado) and various local school visits. Seventeen groups took science- or technical-related tours, including a group from Microsoft . There were 21 college or university groups, ranging from the Smithsonian Institute to Western Nebraska Community College. There were seven tours by political/sponsor groups, including the British Government and the U.S. Senate Committee and three peer centers visited, ranging from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts to TGS. There were also 3 engineering and 2 green building and design tours.
NCAR Research Aviation Facility at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport
Date Range | Total Hosted Tours | K-12 Groups | Science/Technical Tours | College/University Groups | Political/Sponsor Groups | Engineering Groups |
FY19 | 31 | 3 | 15 | 5 | 5 | 3 |
The Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport hosted a total of 31 tours in FY 2019. Five tours were for college and university groups, including STEM undergraduates and the University of Colorado. Five tours were for political and sponsor groups, including a congressional deligation and the Colorado State representative. There were also three tours provided to K-12 groups, including one from the Broomfield Workforce Teen Program. This year there were fifteen science/technical tours provided to groups ranging from the Ball Corporation to Earth Works. There were also 3 engineering groups that toured the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport.
The High Altitude Observatory
Date Range | Total Hosted Tours | Engineering Groups | Science/Technical Tours | College/University Group | Political/Sponsor Groups |
FY19 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
The High Altitude Observatory hosted a total of 6 tours in FY19. One tour was for the University of Rochester and another was for visiting scientists from NOAA.
In addition to the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputer, the NCAR Research Aviation Facility and the High Altitude Observatory tours, there were also 2 tours of EOLs laboratory and 3 tours at the Mesa Lab.
NCAR staff members serve as research advisors and thesis committee members for graduate students around the world.
Date Range | Total Students | International Service | U.S. Service |
FY19 | 202 | 27% | 73% |
In FY 2019, NCAR staff served as graduate advisors or committee members for 202 graduate students. Eighteen of those are working on their M.S. degree and 184 are working on their Ph.D. Seventy-three percent of students attend U.S. universities, whereas 27% study at schools in 24 different countries world-wide including a PhD student from Pennsylvania State University who was advised by Guido Cervone, a PhD student from the Chinese Academy of Science advised by Hanli Liu, and a Master’s student from the University of Costa Rica, advised by Joanie Kleypas.
NCAR staff members serve as publication editors. These positions recognize the appointee's leadership in the field and serve a critical role in developing a given field's future focus.
Date Range | Total Editorships | Different Publications/Journals |
FY19 | 177 | 105 |
91 NCAR staff served in editorial roles for 105 different publications or journals. Falko Judt served as a Reviewer for the Monthly Weather Review while Federico Gasperini served as a Reviewer for the Journal of Geophysical Research. Publications included top-tier journals such as the Monthly Weather Review and the Journal of Climate.
Every year a significant number of NCAR Staff are honored for their scientific excellence and community contributions to the Atmospheric and related sciences.
Date Range | Total External Awards |
FY19 | 42 |
Rich Rotunno (MMM) received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Meteorological Society. This award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the theory and/or application of knowledge about Severe Local Storms during their career.
In FY19 there were 4 NCAR staff awarded the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Fellows: Wen-Chau Lee (EOL), Tammy Weckwerth (EOL), Jenny Sun (RAL) and Michael Ek (RAL). Additionally, Bob Sharman and Peter Gent won the Outstanding Contribution to the Advance of Applied Meteorology and the Sverdrup Gold Medal award, respectively, both presented by AMS. Astrid Maute received the AGU 2018 Editor's Citation for Excellence in Refereeing, Eric Gilleland received the Editor's Award from the Monthly Weather Review and Peter Gent was awarded a Fellow appointment from the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
A fellowship is typically a special appointment granting support for a term in order to support advanced research or study.
Date Range | Total Fellowships |
FY19 | 7 |
Seven NCAR staff received fellowships in 2019. Among the highlights: Sarah Gibson (HAO) was awarded the Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) Associateship offered by the Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica and James Done (MMM) was awarded the Willis Senior Academic Fellow from the Willis Research Network.
Staff across NCAR work directly with classes and groups of K-12 students to develop or deliver lectures, conduct tours, and lead or participate in field trips and other educational activities.
Date Range | Total K-12 Outreach | Schools/Events | Communities Reached |
FY19 | 43 | 58 | 27 |
Forty-three NCAR staff worked with K-12 students from 58 schools or other school based organizations. Activities included a kindergarten clouds session at Alpine Elementary School in Longmont, Colorado, helping teachers, mentoring, and field trips reaching 27 different communities. Examples range from volunteering at the Wyoming State Science Fair in Laramie, Wyoming to conducting a presentation to 6-12th grade students at the Northern Lights Community School in Warba, Minnesota.
Additional highlights include: Mark Miesch (HAO) was on the Advisory Board, Mobile Earth and Space Observatory in middle schools across Colorado which serves approximately 300 students; Lorena Medina Luna was an educator at the Wow! Children's Museum Girls in Science event, sponsored in Lafayette, Colorado and Scot Colburn was a science fair judge at the Colorado Science and Engineering Fair in Fort Collins, Colorado.
NCAR staff participate in mentoring colleagues and students.
Date Range | Total Mentoring |
FY19 | 173 |
During this year, 104 staff members mentored mentees both inside and outside of NCAR. Stephen Yeager (CGD) was a mentor to a student from Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego; Heather Lazrus MMM) was a science mentor for a student from the University of Oklahoma; Melissa Bukovsky (CISL) met with students during the Undergraduate Leadership Workshop at various colleges while Alessandro Fanfarillo (RAL) was a science and software engineer mentor for a machine learning-based method for wind resource assessment at the University of Iowa.
NCAR Staff give presentations about data, models, theories, hypotheses, reviews, and results around the world in talks and posters to audiences ranging from scientists and engineers to the general public.
Date Range | Audience Totals | NCAR Staff - Talk & Poster Presentations |
FY19 | 82,000+ | 985 |
Many thousands of people were in the audience when 228 NCAR staff presented 866 talks globally, from Savannah, Georgia to Kobe, Japan. Examples range from Anders Jensen's (RAL) talk on “Toward improving finescale forecasts with UAS ensemble data assimilation using NCAR's Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART)” at the International Society for Atmospheric Research using Remotely-piloted Aircraft conference in Lugo, Spain; to Bill Lipscomb's (CGD) talk “Atmospheric forcing strategy for Greenland” at the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6 in Washington, DC.
Eighty-seven NCAR staff made more than 119 poster presentations globally, from Bethesda, Maryland to Leuven, Belguim. Examples include Giuliana de Toma’s (HAO) poster "Linear Polarization Observations of Coronal Pseudostreamers” in Boulder, Colorado at the SHINE Conference 2019 and Julie Haggerty’s (EOL) poster “Characterization of mountain waves in the tropopause region using MTP measurements” in Kyoto, Japan at the SPARC General Assembly.
Date Range | Total Teaching Appointments | Countries | U.S. States |
FY19 | 47 | 17% | 83% |
NCAR staff members make important contributions through teaching appointments at institutions of higher education in different positions ranging from Graduate Faculty to Professor.
Teaching appointments at institutions of higher education currently number 47. Seventeen percent of these appointments occur in 6 international countries; 83% took place in 10 U.S. states. The longest term is 34 years, by Grant Branstator (CGD) who is an Adjunct Professor at Iowa State University. The class sizes range from 4 to 350 students.
NCAR staff teach classes and offer training in workshops, tutorials, and colloquia to colleagues and students ranging from model users, to scholars, to fellow researchers.
Date Range | UCAR Staff Members | Workshops/ Tutorials/ Colloquia | # of Classes | # of Participants | Countries | U.S. States |
FY19 | 79 | 138 | 386 | 13000+ | 10 | 9 |
During this year, 79 staff members taught at a total of 138 workshops, tutorials, and colloquia. In all, 386 individual classes were taught, with class sizes ranging from four to 300 people. Nine percent of these events occurred in the following 8 international countries: Australia, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, India, Japan, Malaysia and the United Kingdom; 91% took place in fifteen U.S. states, including Michigan and Alabama. Examples range from Jim VanDyke's (CISL) presentation at the STEM Computers Day hosted by the Univeristy of Wyoming in Cheyenne, Wyoming to Michael Ek's (RAL) instructing at NASA Summer School on Satellite Observations and Climate Models in Pasadena, Califormia.
NCAR staff are called upon to participate in and often lead external scientific, technical, policy, and educational committees. These committees are instrumental to advancing and promoting the work of the scientific and technical community.
Date Range | Total External Committees | NCAR Staff Served | Service on more than one committee |
FY19 | 512 | 182 | 60% |
This year, 182 NCAR staff served in a multitude of roles on 512 external committees (an average of 2.8 committees per participating staff member) for national and international scientific, education, and governmental organizations, including entities such as the European Geosciences Union, the Boulder Public Library, and the University of Utah.
NCAR staff take leaves to visit other institutions for two weeks or more for intellectual growth, professional development, collaboration with research community peers, community support, teaching, or sabbatical. Examples of work include teaching courses or workshops, lecturing, giving tutorials, working with graduate students on dissertation-focused research, student mentoring, collaborative research, and participating in the host institution's outreach to community colleges, minority-serving institutions, and high schools.
Date Range | NCAR Staff Members | Institutions |
FY19 | 6 | 6 |
This year, 6 NCAR staff members took leaves to 6 different institutions, ranging from the University of Hawai’i to Monash University. Among the highlights: Moha Gharamti (CISL) worked a on state-parameter estimation for biogeochemical models at the University of Leeds. The modeling framework is based on NCAR’s CESM and the goal is to provide global estimates of various biogeochemical states and parameters which can be useful for climate projections and reanaly and Angeline Pendergrass (CGD) was on a collaborative leave at ETH Zurich where she was collaborating on the hydrologic cycle and its changes with NCAR Affiliate Professor Reto Knutti.
NCAR Affiliate Scientists
Select university and research-community scientists are invited to carry out long-term, highly interactive, collaborative work with UCAR scientists and are appointed as Affiliate Scientists with three-year terms (see list). This appointment is particularly suitable for parties who desire an extended, close-working relationship on scientific problems of mutual interest. Currently, 44 scientists hold appointments including Dr. Kevin Repasky of Montana State University. Dr. Repasky is collaborating with scientists in the Earth Observing Laboratory(EOL) on developing a deployable version of a low-cost water vapor differential absorption lidar (WV DIAL).
NCAR Affiliate Scientist | Home Institution |
Dr. Elliot Atlas | University of Miami |
Dr. Bernard Aumont | Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systemes Atmospherieques (LISA) |
Dr. Dale Barker | United Kingdom Meteorological Office |
Dr. Alan Blyth | University of Leeds |
Prof. Lance Bosart | State University of New York Albany |
Dr. James Brasseur | University of Colorado |
Dr. Natalia Calvo | Universidad Complutense de Madrid |
Dr. Guido Cervone | Pennsylvania State University |
Dr. Shuyi Chen | Pennsylvania State University |
Prof. Philip Chilson | University of Oklahoma |
Prof. Cathy Clerbaux | CNRS |
Dr. Enrique Curchitser | Rutgers University |
Dr. Ineke de Moortel | University of St. Andrews |
Dr. Leo J. Donner | NOAA GFDL |
Dr. James Doyle | U.S. Naval Research Laboratory |
Dr. Veronika Eyring | German Aerospace Center |
Dr. Jerome Fast | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory |
Dr. Michael Ferrari | aWhere |
Dr. Paul Field | Met Office |
Dr. Silvano Fineschi | Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino |
Dr. John Finnigan | CSIRO, Australia |
Dr. Mary Hayden | University of Colorado |
Dr. Song-You Hong | Yonsei University |
Dr. Joseph Huba | Naval Research Laboratory |
Dr. Harm Jonker | Delft University of Technology |
Dr. Reto Knutti | ETH Zurich, Switzerland |
Dr. Vincent Larson | University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee |
Dr. Hao-Sheng Lin | University of Hawai'i Manoa |
Dr. Elisabeth Lloyd | Indiana University |
Dr. Jakob Mann | Technical University of Denmark |
Dr. Marty Mlynczak | NASA Langley Research Center |
Dr. Phiippe Naveau | Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et I'Environnement (LSCE) CNRS |
Dr. Bart Nijssen | University of Washington |
Prof. Lorenzo Polvani | Columbia University |
Dr. Marilyn Raphael | University of California, Los Angeles |
Dr. Mark Rast | University of Colorado |
Dr. Kevin Repasky | Montana State University |
Dr. Alfonso Saiz-Lopez | Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaction, Madrid |
Dr. Banjamin Sanderson | CERFACS |
Prof. Gunilla Svennson | University of Stockholm |
Dr. Laurent Terray | CERFACS |
Prof. Javier Trujillo-Bueno | Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias |
Dr. Lian-Ping Wang | University of Deleware |
Prof. Mei Zhang | Chinese Academy of Sciences |
Emeritus/Emerita
Scientific and Research Engineering staff who have made significant contributions to NCAR through long and distinguished service in senior positions in research may be granted emeritus or emerita status (see list). This designation confers a life-long honorary distinction. Approval of the President and the Board of Trustees is required. Currently the ranks of Emeritus/Emerita number 32.
Emeritus/Emerita | Year of Appointment |
Jack Calvert | 2002 |
Rit Carbone | 2016 |
Al Cooper | 2013 |
James Dye | 2003 |
Fred Eisele | 2009 |
John Firor* | 1999 |
Brant Foote | 2017 |
John Gille | 2015 |
Peter Gilman | 2009 |
Roy Jenne* | 2013 |
Maura Hagan | 2015 |
Jackson Herring | 1998 |
Greg Holland | 2018 |
James Hurrell | 2019 |
Richard Katz | 2013 |
Charles Knight | 2013 |
Michael Knoelker | 2019 |
Joachim Kuettner* | 2007 |
Margaret Lemone | 2009 |
Donald Lenschow | 2011 |
Bruce Lites | 2013 |
Roland Madden | 2002 |
William Mankin | 2003 |
Nychka, Doug | 2018 |
Annick Pouquet | 2013 |
Art Richmond | 2017 |
Brian Ridley | 2007 |
Raymond Roble | 2009 |
Bob Serafin | 2001 |
Smolarkiewicz, Piotr | 2018 |
Paul Swartztrauber* | 2004 |
David Williamson | 2014 |
Jim Wilson | 2014 |
*deceased
Date Range | Total Scientific/Technical Visits | 1-7 days | 8-14 days | 2 weeks-2 months | 2-6 months | 6 months or longer |
FY19 | 815 | 184 | 82 | 211 | 195 | 143 |
Each year students, scientists, engineers, weather forecasters, and other professionals from around the country and world receive special visitor appointments from labs and programs across NCAR to collaborate with scientific, educational, or technical staff; conduct independent research; or participate in and/or oversee a professional project. Many receive financial support for their visits and some visitors temporarily join the NCAR staff.
This year, colleagues visited NCAR 815 times and hailed from 342 institutions, located in 46 different U.S. states and 40 different countries.