The following sections describe five application areas in which RAL will focus its efforts. For each of these areas we consider overarching goals, the motivation for pursuing these goals, the general approach to achieving them and a list of high-level research and development priorities associated with them. These priorities have been defined in ongoing discussions between RAL managers and technical staff, our collaborators in other NCAR laboratories, divisions and institutes, RAL Advisory Committee, and interested non-technical public and private-sector stakeholders. The process of defining goals and priorities was also informed by careful consideration of:
- RAL’s mission and vision for the future within the context of NCAR’s strategic plan
- National and international needs and opportunities in science and technology
- The expertise, interests, and capabilities of RAL staff and research partners
Throughout this process, every attempt has been made to balance RAL’s responsibility to attack large-scale, difficult problems with its judgment about the tractability of such problems and prospects for progress.
The first five focus areas presented below correspond approximately to work that is concentrated in the five RAL Program units described in Section 1. It is important to recognize, though, that many scientific and development topics discussed here contribute to a broad spectrum of applications goals. There is thus no attempt to “pigeon hole” a piece of research into only one applications topic, or to confine a subject to only one of RAL’s five Programs. For this reason the important and cross-cutting topic of forecast verification and product quality assessment is an activity that is spread naturally across each of the five Programs (though the verification team is housed administratively in WSAP). Rather than show separately the activity in each Program, it is emphasized in a separate section here for unity of presentation. For similar reasons, the topic of quantitative precipitation forecasting, though it is clearly a strong aspect of hydrometeorological research and a key aspect of understanding the water cycle, is also highly relevant to the laboratory’s work involving NWP advances and coupled model applications. In this plan, it is presented with the latter material. We regard the research overlap between application themes and the cross-strapping of scientists and physical research topics across RAL Program units as a strength of our program. We seek out and maintain similar collaborations with other parts of NCAR, as well as with the universities and other government labs.
The discussion here is intended as a summary, as noted earlier. More detailed descriptions of RAL science and technology transfer can be found in the project plans of the lab’s five Programs and the RAL Annual Report on the RAL web page.