UCAR Outstanding Publication Award

Recipient(s)
Paty Romero-Lankao
Award Year
2010
Award Type
internal
Nominee or Winner
Nominee
Awarding Organization or Entity
UCAR
Testing Theories to Explore the Drivers of Cities' Atmospheric Emissions

Paty Romero-Lankao (RAL), Doug Nychka (CISL/IMAGe) and John Tribbia (formerly at ISSE) for their paper, which contributes in pioneering ways to the heated debate about greenhouse gas emissions and how they are related to the development trajectories, status, and economic characteristics of countries worldwide. The paper also provides an innovative foundation for how to incorporate socio-economic aspects into the physical sciences' global carbon cycle discussion. This work will have a major and lasting impact on interdisciplinary sciences and environmental policy alike. "This article represents a courageous and successful attempt to deal with grand questions, while approaching them in a methodologically sound way."

UCAR Outstanding Publication Award

Recipient(s)
Thomas T. Warner (posthumous)
Award Year
2011
Award Type
internal
Nominee or Winner
Winner
Awarding Organization or Entity
UCAR
Numerical Weather and Climate Prediction

This book provides an exceptionally well-written account of the practical and cutting-edge aspects of numerical predictions, with a particular emphasis on understanding model processes, as well as their limitations and how errors affect solutions. It includes clear descriptions of best practices, predictability, operational forecasting, and a wide range of special applications of numerical models not found in previous textbooks. This volume is a comprehensive reflection of the author's far-reaching experience gained through thirty years of teaching courses on numerical weather and climate prediction as well as mentoring a long line of graduate students and young professionals. Each chapter includes useful exercises and suggests further reading material. It is "a rich, effectively written and comprehensive detailed summary of the field of atmospheric modeling from local to global scales. It should be in the library of all meteorologists, climate researchers, and other scientists who are interested in the capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of modeling." This textbook has already reached Cambridge University Press' top-ten bestselling titles in Atmospheric Science and Meteorology, despite its very recent publication. The author has written a standout textbook that provides a comprehensive yet accessible treatment of weather and climate predictions, which will serve graduate students, researchers, and professionals alike.

UCAR Outstanding Publication Award

Recipient(s)
Matthias Steiner, Daniel Megenhardt, and Yubao Liu
Award Year
2012
Award Type
internal
Nominee or Winner
Nominee
Awarding Organization or Entity
UCAR
Translation of Ensemble Weather Forecasts into Probabilistic Air Traffic Capacity Impact

Matthias Steiner (RAL/HAP), Richard Bateman (CU), Daniel Megenhardt (RAL/WSAP), Yubao Liu (RAL/NSAP), Matthew Pocernich (Neptune and Company, Inc.), Jimmy Krozel (Metron Aviation)

This article presents an elegant, highly innovative, and broadly influential conceptual framework for using probabilistic forecasting to characterize and manage the risk that weather poses to air traffic. The framework is demonstrated through a case study of a very disruptive and costly outbreak of thunderstorms in the northeastern United States. Beyond just this demonstration, the framework has the potential to transform how our society conceives, builds, uses, and evaluates weather-based decision-support technologies. Several letters of support highlight the framework's extensibility - NOAA's Robert Maxson calls it "the [probabilistic forecast] guidance of the future." Although published less than three years ago, the article has already advanced technology that is being used at NOAA's Aviation Weather Testbed. Experts in probabilistic forecasting and risk management describe the article as a "ground breaker" and "a well-written roadmap to both the scientific community and user community on where we as a nation should be headed in ensemble weather prediction research and operations." The article embodies the finest qualities of the work done in RAL: imaginative; cross-disciplinary; cross-organizational; and beneficial to communities of scientists, engineers, and end-users. It also epitomizes NCAR's overarching mission of science in service to society.

UCAR Outstanding Publication Award

Recipient(s)
Julie Demuth and Jeff Lazo
Award Year
2013
Award Type
internal
Nominee or Winner
Nominee
Awarding Organization or Entity
UCAR
Creation and Communication of Hurricane Risk Information

Julie Demuth (NCAR/RAL), Rebecca Morss (NCAR/MMM), Betty Hearn Morrow (SocResearch, Miami, FL), and Jeff Lazo (NCAR/RAL).

 

This work represents an important effort to connect the forecast community that generates high-impact weather warnings, the emergency management community that uses these warnings to determine protective response actions, and the media who deliver the risk, warning, and response action information to the public to save lives and property. In doing so, this effort fully embraces an institutional imperative set forth in the new NCAR Strategic Plan: "Integrate the physical and social sciences to provide meaningful, useable information on the societal impacts of and vulnerabilities to climate change ...and improve the communication of risk and uncertainty to a diverse population." In their article, Demuth et al. outline the complex interactions among components of the United States hurricane warning system and elucidate the challenges in communicating risk through an effective partnership. This paper identifies concepts that researchers may have observed or thought of, and it ties those ideas together in a novel, coherent way of explaining the warning system. The study clearly reveals that collaboration across disciplinary boundaries, and between researchers and practitioners, is needed to understand and improve the translation and communication of weather threats into risk reduction actions.

UCAR Outstanding Publication Award

Recipient(s)
Roy Rasmussen, Changhai Liu, Kyoko Ikeda, David Gochis, David Yates, Fei Chen, Michael Barlage, Jimy Dudhia, Wei Yu, Kathleen Miller, Vanda Grubisic, Gregory Thompson, and Ethan Gutmann
Award Year
2015
Award Type
internal
Nominee or Winner
Winner
Awarding Organization or Entity
UCAR
High-Resolution Coupled Climate Runoff Simulations of Seasonal Snowfall over Colorado: A Process Study of Current and Warmer Climate

Roy Rasmussen, Changhai Liu, Kyoko Ikeda, David Gochis, David Yates, Fei Chen, Michael Barlage, Jimy Dudhia, Wei Yu, Kathleen Miller, Vanda Grubišić, Gregory Thompson, and Ethan Gutmann, with Mukul Tewari (IBM Watson Research Center) and Kristi Arsenault (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

High-resolution coupled climate runoff simulations of seasonal snowfall over Colorado: A process study of current and warmer climate.

UCAR Outstanding Publication Award

Recipient(s)
Martyn Clark, D. Kavetski, and F. Fenicia
Award Year
2016
Award Type
internal
Nominee or Winner
Nominee
Awarding Organization or Entity
UCAR

Characterizing Uncertainty of the Hydrologic Impacts of Climate Change

Martyn P. Clark, Robert L. Wilby, Ethan D. Gutmann, Julie A. Vano, Subhrendu Gangopadhyay, Andrew W. Wood, Hayley J. Fowler, Christel Prudhomme, Jeffrey R. Arnold & Levi D. Brekke 

UCAR Outstanding Publication Award

Recipient(s)
Monaghan, Hayden, Wilhelmi, and Steinhoff
Award Year
2017
Award Type
internal
Nominee or Winner
Winner
Awarding Organization or Entity
UCAR
On the seasonal occurrence and abundance of the Zika virus vector mosquito Aedes aegypti in the contiguous United States

Andrew Monaghan, Cory Morin (University of Washington), Daniel Steinhoff, Olga Wilhelmi, Mary Hayden, Dale Quattrochi (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center), Michael Reiskind (North Carolina State University), Alun Lloyd (North Carolina State University), Kirk Smith (Maricopa County Environmental Services), Christopher Schmidt , Paige Scalf (Durham University), and Kacey Ernst (University of Arizona)
 

NWA Aviation Weather Award

Recipient(s)
Aviation Weather Research Program Team
Award Year
2002
Award Type
external
Awarding Organization or Entity
NWA