Report on the 7 December 1992 GEM Steering Committee Meeting In attendance: O. de la Beaujardiere, R. Behnke, S. Curtis, D. Baker, T. Eastman, J. Fedder, B. Fraser, E. Friis-Christensen, J. Hughes, J. Kan, D. Knipp, W. Lotko, L. Lyons, T. Rosenberg, C. Russell, J. Samson, J. Sojka, D. Wolf Submitted by W. Lotko on 11 January, 1993 (1) FY93 budget outlook, proposals, program review: The FY93 budget for NSF research (reported by R. Behnke) implies an overall reduction of 2-3% for basic research funding in general, with the reduction expected to be distributed more or less uniformly throughout NSF including the Upper Atmospheric Section. The implication for the GEM program is a second year of flat funding. T. Eastman reported that 16 proposals were submitted for GEM program funding in October; he expects the proposal review process to be completed sometime in February. (T. Eastman indicated as of January 7, 1993 that the budget for the MAG program is still unsettled!) (2) Campaign coordination: T. Rosenberg is arranging the logistics for the Summer `93 Workshop, to be held June 28 - July 2 in Snowmass, Colorado. There was agreement that the annual workshop (e.g., Snowmass) and a mini-workshop preceeding the Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco seem to be working well in providing appropriate forums for the working groups and coordination efforts. UCLA will continue to be the hub for coordination of GEM electronic and hardcopy communications. Evidently, there have been some problems in the distribution of the GEM Stone newsletter by the US STEP office; it was decided to continue to use the US STEP office for distribution of the newsletter (which is produced 3-4 times/year at UCLA) in the near term unless problems with timely distribution of the newsletter persist. Some concerns raised by coordinators L. Lyons, T. Rosenberg and C. Russell include: (i) Targeted progress may be difficult to achieve without increasing the size of the program; (ii) The number of steering committee members and campaign coordinators seems to be incomensurate with the size of the program (no one submitted a resignation after this suggestion!); (iii) There are sometimes long delays in getting interplanetary field data for GEM observing campaign days; and (iv) Continuity in the production of AMIE plots for campaign intervals is essential; in one year, however, this service may become subject to vagaries of administrative guidelines for NCAR postdoctoral tenure. (3) Coordination for Snowmass `93 Workshop: J. Hughes and D. Wolf will coordinate the Tail/Substorm segment of the Snowmass `93 workshop. The format will be similar to last year's workshop with the first three days devoted to the Boundary Layer Campaign (program to be organized by L. Lyons, T. Rosenberg, and C. Russel) and the last two days devoted to planning for a Tail/Substorm Campaign. The theme of the T/S workshop will be to assess what is needed to address the outstanding problems that were identified in the first T/S workshop, e.g., what sort of new tools, models, instruments, sites are needed. (J. Hughes noted that the report from the Summer `92 T/S workshop should be forthcoming in the next month. Copies will be sent to all workshop participants, the NSF UAR Program Directors and Section Head, and any others who specifically request a copy.) The tentative plan is to form two working groups at the T/S workshop--one for theory/modeling, one for observations. There was some interest in focusing attention at the workshop on quantitative measures of a substorm. Limited funds will be available to subsidize student participation at the Summer Workshop. Requests to T. Rosenberg should be accompanied by a letter from the student's adviser. Unfortunately, resources are not available to subsidize travel for attendees to the BL campaign workshop who are not graduate students, except possibly in a few cases of extreme need; any such requests should be directed to T. Rosenberg. It was decided to make awards for outstanding student poster(s). The CCs will advertise the workshop in EOS this winter. It was also mentioned that the CEDAR program may hold a Numerical Techniques School in Boulder on Saturday, June 26 that may be of interest to some Snowmass Workshop participants. J. Hughes and D. Wolf were advised by T. Rosenberg to convey to him as soon as possible the expected room requirements for the T/S workshop so that he can make the appropriate reservations with the Snowmass Resort Association. (4) GEM representation at the IACG Workshop: C. Russell will be attending the IACG Science Workshop on ``Boundaries in Collisionless Plasmas'' and, if an appropriate opportunity presents itself, will convey the interest of the GEM community in participating in coordinated observing campaigns involving IACG spacecraft and ground-based instruments. It was recommended that the GEM steering committee chair forward a letter to the Magnetospheric Physics Program Director at NASA Headquarters (Elden Whipple) with copies to other appropriate IACG parties indicating the potential interest of the GEM community in coordinating such efforts. A preliminary draft of this letter will first be forwarded to the GEM Program Director. (5) Coordination with other programs: Eigil Friis-Christensen gave an update on various Danish-Nordic activities, including: (1) Funds have been committed to build the Svalbard radar; (2) A proposal has been made for a Svalbard magnetometer array; (3) The Danish-Norwegian Cusp Campaign is underway and a scanning photometer and imaging riometers, among other instruments, were operating on the east coast of Greeenland during the November GEM campaign; (4) A Cluster satellite ground-based observing group has been formed; (5) A NATO workshop on ``Physical Signatures of Magnetospheric Boundary Layer Processes'' will be held May 9-14, 1993 in Norway following the EGS workshop; (6) The Danish Oersted satellite mission underwent a system design review this Fall; tentative launch is planned for September `95. S. Curtis briefly discussed some of the progress that has been made in the GGS program including the deployment of the Superdarn HF radars and the intercalibration of global MHD codes. (6) Data/Model base issues: Due to a low response rate, the results of the data/model base questionnaire that the Data Task Force circulated to the GEM community last summer remain rather sketchy. The questionnaire will be recirculated this winter to try reach a consensus by the time of the Snowmass workshop on data/model base requirements for the program. D. Baker discussed the sort of logistic support the US STEP Coordination office could provide in establishing and maintaining a data/model base for GEM. The USSCO is already planning to facilitate campaigns and data exchange for STEP and could do the same for GEM, if requested, with minimal or no additional funds from the GEM program. At this time, O. de la Beajardiere will formally write a letter to STEP (M. Teague and/or G. Rostoker) regarding the availability of digital magnetometer data; the letter will inquire about the possibility of rapid processing of the magnetometer data for specific intervals corresponding to GEM observing campaigns. There are clearly other types of logistic support that the USSCO could provide for the GEM program, but given the still incomplete input from the Data/Model Base questionnaire, a decision on what sort of overall support to request from the USSCO will not be made until the Snowmass `93 workshop. W. Lotko noted that the GEM community can immediately make use of NSSDC (if desired) for centralized distribution of information on any GEM models; Dieter Bilitza at NSSDC is heading STEP Project 6.7 Directory of Solar-Terretrial Models and has requested input from the GEM Community (via W. Lotko) for the directory entries. (7) IMP Data for GEM Observing Campaigns: O. de la Beaujardiere will draft a letter to Ron Lepping and/or Joe King asking that the processing of IMP IMF data taken during GEM observing campaigns be expedited. Odile suggests that the letter should also be forwarded to A. J. Lazarus at Goddard who has the solar wind data. The intention is to put these data (IMF and SW) in a central repository accessible to all GEM participants. Odile will explore the possibility of using NCAR as the site. (8) Other Matters: The steering committee was apprised of an effort by V. Papitashvili to assess the feasibility of setting up a rotating GEM fellowship that would provide funds for appropriate scientists from the former Soviet Union to work for a limited period at US research institutions involved in various aspects of geospace environment modeling. Selection of fellows and institutions would presumably be determined by some sort of competitive proposal. It is essential that the funds for such a fellowship come from a source outside the normal channels in NSF Upper Atmospheric Research, e.g., from an international cooperation program within NSF. Given this latter constraint, the SC endorsed, in principle, the idea of establishing such a GEM fellowship. (9) Boundary Layer Campaign Goals: The meeting adjourned before a full discussion on BLC goals could be completed. W. Lotko summarized some of the goals that have been articulated by SC members and others. This item will be taken up again at the next Snowmass SC meeting, to be held on Saturday morning, July 3, 1993 at the Silvertree Hotel.