--------------------------------------------------------- Report on the 3 July, 1992 GEM Steering Committee Meeting --------------------------------------------------------- By William Lotko Steering Committee Chairman Present: O. de la Beaujardiere, J. Fedder, B. Fraser, E. Friis-Christensen, T. Hill, J. Hughes, W. Lotko, T. Mukai (for A. Nishida), V. Papitashvili (for US STEP), J. Samson, G. Siscoe. (1) April Program Review: The outcome of the GEM proposals review held at NSF last April was summarized by W. Lotko. It was noted that the net number of awards in the second year of the program will decrease by two as a consequence of (i) a nearly flat budget for the second year (adjusted for inflation) and (ii) an increase in the average award cost in year two, due in part to outlays for equipment acquisition. This state of affairs raised obvious concerns, especially given the (less than) 20% funding rate of proposals, with many of the unfunded proposals rated excellent to very good. The budget outlook for the third year is better with a projected increase in program funds of $800k in FY 93 as proposed but not yet secured by Rich Behnke. There are uncertainties, however, in priorities within the Atmospheric Sciences Division owing to the unexpected departure of G. Bierly this September. (2) Nominations for New Steering Committee Members: A list of potential nominees to replace T. Hill, R. Lysak, and G. Siscoe has been forwarded to Tim Eastman who will make and announce the appointments by the end of August 92. The list includes three theorists/modelers and four observationalists. It is recommended, that of the three new appointees, one theorist and two observationalists be selected so that both approaches are more or less equally represented on the committee. (3) Campaign Coordination: (a) Tenure of Campaign Coordinators - W. Lotko conveyed C. Russell's memo to the committee, which suggests ``that a 3 or 4 year campaign can be done with a single term; a 6-year or longer campaign would benefit from a new coordinator, half way through.'' The steering committee endorsed this plan, in principle. (b) Duration of Campaign - The question of how long the boundary layer campaign should last was considered. It was decided that the campaign goals need to be better articulated before deciding this question. The discussion of campaign goals will be taken up at the steering committee meeting at the December 92 AGU meeting. (c) Review of Campaign Coordination - Coordination for observing campaigns and data analysis seems to be proceeding very efficiently; however, modeling efforts leading to a GGCM seem not to be coordinated as well as they might be. Model coordination might improve if modest funds were made available for a GGCM coordinator, i.e., a coordinator who would have responsibility for advancing modeling concepts and facilitating coordination between various modeling efforts. (d) Intercampaign/Interprogram Coordination - With plans for the second (and overlapping) campaign on magnetotail and substorms underway, and with the large confluence of international spacecraft experiments in the 94-95 timeframe that are expected to provide unique opportunities for global magnetospheric observations, the steering committee recognizes a need for advance planning for the scheduling of data gathering campaigns and data analysis efforts. Coordination at this level would span at least two GEM campaigns as well as programs sponsored by NASA and the other space agencies. The committee discussed several possibilities for facilitating broad intercampaign and interprogram coordination, including appointment of a special `interface' coordinator, a possible role for the CEDAR-GEM-STEP-GGS coordinating committee, and use of the US STEP coordination office. There was no clear consensus on how best to proceed with such a coordination effort. In particular, some members of the committee expressed concern about increasing the number of coordinators in the program; others felt that it would be very useful to have a single person serving as the interface between the GEM program and other relevant programs. Lacking a clear vision on how to proceed at this time, the committee felt that the program director might consider accepting proposals for an interface coordinator, with a final decision on the utility of such a coordinator to be made on the basis of the proposal(s), the funding level for FY93, and the evaluations of the proposal review panel. Additional discussion of this point, involving the Program Director, should be taken up at the next steering committee meeting. (e) IMP 8 Wind Data - Odile stressed the importance of obtaining IMP 8 solar wind data during GEM observing campaigns and suggested that the steering committee make some sort of an official request to NASA to make this data available. Two issues that need to be sorted out are (i) how much lead time does NASA need to respond to a request for telemetry service to IMP 8 and (ii) how quickly can they process the data once it has been received. Subsequent to the meeting, Odile, Eastman and Lotko will be pursuing the issue with the appropriate parties. (f) Consultation with Campaign Coordinators - The steering committee will formally ask the campaign coordinators to provide an update on campaign coordination at the beginning of each steering committee meeting so that discussions on campaign coordination can take place directly between the SC and CCs rather than through the SC chair, as has been the case on some occasions during the past year. (3) Advance Planning for the Summer 93 Tail/Substorm Workshop: Jeff Hughes will coordinate the Tail/Substorm segment of the Summer 93 workshop. A new steering committee member (to be appointed by T. Eastman in August) representing theory will also be asked to develop the workshop program with Jeff. The workshop will focus on questions of what observations and modeling are needed to address the outstanding problems that were identified in the initial tail/substorm workshop this summer. It will be necessary once again to coordinate the tail/substorm workshop with the boundary layer campaign workshop that will be planned by the campaign coordinators. (4) International Coordination: Toshi Mukai (representing A. Nishida) gave some perspectives on the IACG meeting held this past June. He noted that the First IACG Campaign on Magnetotail Energy Flow will begin with the entry of Interball in late 93. Vladimir Papitashvili represented the U.S. STEP Coordination Office and pointed out that the STEP Coordination Office will assist in establishing links between future GEM and IACG campaigns. Of particular interest is the winter 94-95 period when a large number of satellite experiments will be operating. Some efforts were made to identify existing links between the GEM program and some of the scientists involved in the various `STEP-related spacecraft' reported in the Jan 92 STEP Newsletter. There was also some discussion of whether it would be desirable and possible to sponsor a GEM Fellow through the international office at NSF; it was suggested that Tim Eastman determine the feasibility of securing funds for a GEM Fellow via this other channel at NSF. Eigil Friis-Christensen gave on update on various Nordic activities, in particular, on the Danish-Norwegian `GEM' Cusp/Boundary Layer program that is now funded for three years. It involves a full suite of diagnostics at Svalbard and Greenland sites operated by a number of international participants from Japan, the US, and Europe including Russia. Brian Fraser reported on relevant activities in Australia, New Zealand and the Antarctic; John Samson volunteered to prepare an article for the GEMSTONE newsletter on Canadian activities such as Canopus, Superdarn, Freja instruments, Canadian Network for Space Research and computational space plasma physics at the University of Alberta. (5) Graduate Student Participation and GEM Prize Lecture: The steering committee enthusiastically endorses the idea of increasing graduate student participation in the program. It was suggested that current participants provide names and e-mail addresses of prospective student participants who might be interested in attending future GEM meetings. It was also suggested that student poster papers be judged and prizes be awarded for outstanding papers (analogy to CEDAR was made here). The idea of initiating a GEM prize lecture was also discussed, but lacking a compelling rationale for such a lecture, it was decided to table the proposal at this time. Both of these items may be discussed further at the Fall AGU steering committee meeting when the campaign coordinators will be available to participate in the discussion.