*************************** ** THE GEM MESSENGER ** *************************** Volume 10, Number 5 January 14, 2000 ------------------------------------------------------------ Minutes of GEM Steering Committee Meeting, December 12, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------ From: Dick Wolf (wolf at alfven.rice.edu) GEM Steering Committee Meeting December 12, 1999, 7:00-9:30pm Attendees: Sunanda Basu, Joachim Birn, Joe Borovsky, Anthony Chan, Bob Clauer, John Freeman, Ray Greenwald, Fred Hall, Jeff Hughes, Janet Kozyra, John Lyon, Larry Lyons, Jimmy Raeder, Chris Russell, Howard Singer, Roger Smith, Dick Wolf Substituting for Kile Baker, Sunanda Basu gave a status report from NSF. Proposals to the Magnetospheric Physics Program are running close to a 50% success rate, although preliminary numbers suggest that the rate for GEM proposals this year may be less. The deadline for National Space Weather Program proposals will be January 7, 2000. $1M is available for the competition this year, somewhat less than last year. There are some changes at the top levels of NSF's Geosciences directorate: Margaret Leinen is the new Director, and Jarvis Moyers is the new Deputy Director for atmospheric sciences. Sunanda encouraged participation in S-RAMP, which runs from now until 2002. The first S-RAMP conference will be in October, 2000. John Freeman brought up the question of having a GEM Steering Committee meeting at NSF Headquarters, as a way to make GEM more widely known at NSF. (The CEDAR Steering Committee normally has a one-day fall meeting at NSF to plan the summer workshop.) The reaction to this idea was generally favorable, and John will pursue the possibility of having such a meeting next year. Bob Clauer commented that it would be good to get space physicists in general, and magnetospheric physicists in particular, more involved in the Antarctic Program. He suggested the possibility of a presentation on that program at next summer's workshop. There were brief reports from several of the campaigns and working groups. Jimmy Raeder reported that the deadline for GEM Substorm Challenge papers to be submitted to JGR has been moved back to January 31, 2000. Ray Greenwald and Jeff Hughes, reporting on behalf of the Ionosphere-Magnetosphere-Coupling Working Group, said that their goal for the summer 2000 workshop sessions would be to define the objectives and structure of a Ionosphere-Magnetosphere-Coupling Campaign. For that purpose, they will need more breakout sessions next summer than they had in 1999. Joachim Birn reported on the 12/12/99 meeting of the GGCM Steering Committee. He said that four major tasks had been defined, with people assigned to work on each: * EOS article on GGCM: G. Siscoe and R. Wolf; * Utilization of CCMC: M. Heinemann and G. Siscoe; * Production of a book of MHD results: C.R. Clauer, J. Freeman, G. Siscoe; * GEM Challenges to display GGCM capabilities: J. Birn, J. Raeder. GGCM activities have focused so far mostly on Phase 1, which entails getting model results posted on the web. The GGCM Steering Committee advocates moving as soon as possible to Phase 2, which involves model runs on demand. Fred Hall spoke of the need to increase graduate student involvement in the planning of GEM campaigns and working groups. He recommended that we create an environment where students are comfortable presenting data. He reminded us that the GEM Steering Committee had agreed at earlier meetings to add student representatives to the leadership of the different campaigns. He also suggested that the June workshop include an introductory talk at the beginning of the first session of each working group, to outline the WG goals and approach for the uninitiated. The idea of a glossary of terms and abbreviations was suggested. A lengthy discussion followed, concerning how we might change GEM procedures to involve graduate students in planning of the June workshops. Some campaign coordinators commented that it wasn't clear how to involve graduate students in the workshop planning process, because of its fluid and informal character. Since much of the planning is done by trading emails, it was suggested that copies of those emails be sent to the student coordinator(s) for each campaign. While there was a consensus that GEM needs to do better at involving graduate students in the planning process, there was no clear consensus on how to do that. We agreed to keep discussing the problem. John Freeman reported on a MiniWorkshop session at which the campaign coordinators and working group leaders discussed plans for the June 2000 workshop. That workshop will have to end early Friday afternoon, instead of late afternoon, because of limitations on available hotel rooms. The slight shortening of the meeting may require a reduction in the number of breakout sessions. The GEM Steering Committee affirmed the scheme that came out of the earlier workshop planning session. The present scheme is given on the web at http://rigel.rice.edu/~GEM/GEM2000_Draft_Schedule.html. Roger Smith reported on deliberations concerning the next CEDAR-GEM-SHINE Joint Workshop. Discussions earlier in the 12/12 MiniWorkshop led to the conclusion that that Joint Workshop should be held on the Saturday after the spring AGU (June 3, 2000). The GEM Steering Committee approved that choice. Bob Clauer suggested holding a "Yosemite-type" CEDAR-GEM-SHINE meeting in 2001. He will develop plans for such a meeting. Jimmy Raeder spoke in favor of a GEM outreach committee that would work on press releases, etc., emphasizing modeling and ground-based research. It was suggested that a list of experts on different topics be compiled. The Steering Committee endorsed the formation of an outreach committee, headed by Jimmy Raeder. Chris Russell handed out some preliminary copies of the GEM 7-year report. The document includes a CD on which key GEM websites are captured. Five hundred copies will be printed. The preliminary copies have some flaws in printing and binding, which will be fixed before the final printing. The Steering Committee thanked Chris for successfully completing a difficult task. John Freeman initiated a discussion of what might be done to improve the effectiveness of GEM. He mentioned that George Siscoe had indicated that he thought GEM could benefit from greater interaction with the ISTP program and also from greater interaction between those in the observation oriented campaigns and GGCM so that the models could be compared to observations more effectively. Regarding interaction with ISTP, John agreed to make a greater effort to get more ISTP personnel (and investigators) to GEM and to publicize GEM at ISTP meetings. There was considerable discussion on the matter of how to make model/data comparisons more effective. This whole question seemed to be a contentious issue for which no clear suggestions were forthcoming. It was noted that most GGCM sessions were already planned as joint sessions but that they were usually in parallel with other sessions and generally not well attended by non-modelers. Since the issue was not resolved it may need to be revisited. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |To add name to the mailing list or for a message to the GEM community | | please contact: editor at igpp.ucla.edu | | | |URL of GEM Home Page: http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/gem/Welcome.html | |Please update your e-mail address. | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+