|
NCAS Mission
Advancing
NOAA’s Missions in Education and Weather Research with focus on Air
Quality – Climate – Environmental Health Connections
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The NOAA Center for Atmospheric Sciences (NCAS) is a cooperative
partnership with four institutions: Howard University (HU) – lead
institution, Jackson State University (JSU), the University of
Puerto Rico at Mayaguez (UPRM), and the University of Texas at El
Paso (UTEP), and two major universities: University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and the State University of New York at
Albany (SUNYA). The four minority institutions consist of
the highest enrollments of African American and Hispanic students in
the physical sciences, engineering, and atmospheric-related
disciplines (including meteorology) at the undergraduate and
graduate levels. During this reporting period, NCAS provided direct
funding for 18 PhD students, 11 MS students, and 35 BS students
across the Center schools. All of these students were involved in
NCAS research activities during the academic year.
The primary research
themes of NCAS are: (1) “Advancing the Understanding of Air
Quality-Climate-Health Interactions” and (2) “Improving Prediction
of Precipitation Through Integrated Measurements, Models, and Data
Analyses”. The Center supports the following activities under
these themes:
(i)
Infrastructure development for weather-related research
and applications for NOAA, with a specific focus on urban and
transition regions within the United States.
(ii)
Production of a domestic corps of highly trained
atmospheric & environmental specialists who can replace the current
aging research and professional workforce at NOAA,
especially in the National Weather Service (NWS), and other federal
agencies, institutions, and within the private sector.
(iii)
Research and applications in support of NOAA’s
strategic goals, specifically those of the National Weather Service
(NWS).
NCAS has continued to
expand and strengthen its research and educational partnerships with
AOML (ICON/CREWS station, student exchange and advising within NHC
and HRD, joint research AEROSE-II, AEROSE-III, AMMA), NESDIS-ORAD
(AIRS validation, joint publications, summer student mentorships,
graduate student advising), NWS (WRF model validation and testing,
student training, collaborative research and publications, NWS
internships), JCSDA (forward model development for a Community
Radiative Transfer Model, and satellite data assimilation), and OAR
(research collaborations at Beltsville , field campaigns in
partnership with ARL, air quality model development).
|
