*************************** ** THE GEM MESSENGER ** *************************** Volume 12, Number 1 January 9, 2002 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Minutes of the GEM Steering committee, San Francisco Marriot Hotel December 9, 2001 6:30-9 pm ------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Frank Toffoletto Present: Mary Hudson, Dartmouth College, (chair), Anthony Chan, Rice University Atsuhiro Nishida, ISAS, Brian Fraser, University of Newcastle, Australia, Chris Russell, UCLA, David Webb, AFRL, Delores Knipp, USAF Academy, Dennis Gallagher, NASA Marshall, Frank Toffoletto, Rice University, George Siscoe, Boston University, Howard Singer, NOAA, Jeff Hughes, Boston University, Jim Sharber, NASA HQ, Jimmy Raeder, UCLA, Joachim Birn, LANL, Joe Borovsky, LANL, John Lyon, Dartmouth College, Kile Baker, NSF, Larry Lyons, UCLA, Maria Spasojevic, Stanford, (student rep), Mark Moldwin, UCLA, Sunanda Basu, NSF, 1. 2002 GEM meeting Frank Toffoletto described plans for the 2002 GEM meeting. The meeting will again be held in Snowmass, Colorado, June 23-28. The meeting will consist of student tutorials on the Sunday, followed by 4.5 days of workshops from Monday to Friday. The GEM steering committee meeting will follow either on Friday the 28th after the meeting or the morning of Saturday the 29th of June. 2. 2002 CEDAR meeting Delores Knipp was present as the Cedar representative. The 2002 Cedar meeting will be held at the Radisson Conference Center, Longmont, Colorado June 16-21, 2002. (http://cedarweb.hao.ucar.edu/wkshp/) 3. 2002 SHINE meeting David Webb was present representing the SHINE community. The 2002 SHINE workshop to be held on August 18 - 22, 2002 at the Buffalo Mountain Lodge, Banff, Alberta, Canada (http://www.sec.noaa.gov/shine/mtgs_upcoming/W2002/web_ann.html). 4. Campaign status reports: - Jeff Hughes reported that the MI Coupling campaign is entering its main phase. Its 2 working groups on Mass Coupling and on Electrodynamic Coupling are considering how best to configure campaign challenges. A particular focus for the summer workshop will be the importance of small scale structure, especially in the auroral zone, on global average values of quantities such as energy exchange. - Anthony Chan reported for the Inner Magnetosphere/Storms (IM/S) campaign. At the Mini-Workshop members of the IM/S campaign discussed IM/S science issues and campaign planning. Plans were made for 3 days of meetings for the 2002 Snowmass workshop. - Larry Lyons reported that the Tail/Substorm campaign is winding down and will be needing 5-6 sessions for the ¹02 workshop and 4-5 for the ¹03 workshop. For the 2002 workshop, the plans for the Tail/Substorm campaign include 2 sessions on data, and 3 sessions on steady magnetospheric convection (the third to be held in conjunction with Inner Magnetosphere/Storms). - George Siscoe reported that the GGCM steering committee voted to disband since the most of its activities are to be replaced by the CCMC (http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov ). It was suggested that the director of the CCMC be made an ex-officio member of the GEM steering committee. The plans for the summer workshop also include a joint session with the inner magnetosphere/storms campaign. 5. NSF report: Kile Baker, program director for the Magnetospheric physics program at NSF, reported on the overall status of the program and of GEM. There will be an estimated 8% increase in funding for 2002 but projections indicated the likelihood of for flat funding at best in future years. He summarized some specific programs of interest to the GEM community, including: Space Weather: - In FY1999 there was ~$2 M available - In FY2000 we had only about $1.2 M - No Competition in FY2001 - In the past the competition included contributions from AFOSR and ONR ($200 K from AFOSR/$100 K from ONR) - New competition in FY2002. Proposal Deadline was Dec. 3 (19 proposals were submitted to MAG program). - In FY2002 we should have around $2M again (maybe more, if NSF gets a significant increase in funding) Science and Technology Centers (STC): One Space Physics proposal is still in the running. Information Technology Research (ITR): - 3 Classes of proposals - Small: under $500K total, 3 year max. duration - Essentially no money for FY2002 - Medium: between $500K and $5 M, 5 year max. duration - Large: $5 M to $15M, 5 year max. duration ~100 pre-proposals, ~2 of interest to ATM Collaboration in Mathematical Geosciences: - Requires participation of mathematician - Subject must include multi-scale processes and coupling - Proposal deadline is February 25th, 2002. Other programs: - BioComplexity - Workforce Diversity - Jewell Prendeville in charge of this program for ATM - Nanotechnology - Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) (due 1/24/02) GEM in 2001: - $250K was available for non-M-I coupling part of GEM. - $500K was available for M-I coupling - $250K from GEM (Magnetospheric Physics)/$250K from CEDAR (Aeronomy) - GEM non-M-I Coupling: - 12 independent proposals / 6 funded (50%) - GEM M-I Coupling: - 39 independent proposals - 10 funded (25% success rate) - 8 of the 10 were from PIs who tend to be part of GEM rather than part of CEDAR GEM in 2002: - 22 Independent proposals - 3 GGCM - 11 Inner Magnetosphere/Storms - 8 M-I Coupling - Requested Funding: - $1.66 M for first year, $5.06 M total - Median: $70 K/yr - Success rate: - A priori with fixed level of funding: 33% - GEM currently has about $1,500,000/year for GEM. - Average grant is 3 years /~$500,000 available each year for new proposals - Rich Behnke has indicated that at least an additional $250,000 will be added to GEM this year. $1,750,000/yr. This is approx. 16% increase in total GEM funding - BUT it really translates into only 1 additional 3-year grant. - BUT it looks like increases for FY2002 will be substantial. If so, it is expected that GEM funding to go up by $500 K, for a total of $2,000,000/yr. This translates to 2-3 additional grants each year. GEM Postdoc: - The GEM steering committee voted in favor of implementing a GEM postdoc program, similar to the Cedar program, that would support a postdoctoral researcher. Applications would be selected through a proposal system. 6. NASA report: Jim Sharber, Geospace discipline scientist at NASA, gave a NASA HQ update: - TIMED was successfully launched on December 7, 2001. - HESSI launch is scheduled for January 24, 2002. - The Geospace Definition Team Living with A Star (LWS) is now meeting with the objective of defining the geospace mission. Its first meeting was disrupted by the events of September 11. A meeting was held in November and another is planned for January 28-30 at APL. It is anticipated that the task will be completed in the April-May timeframe. - The ROSS 2002 [due out late January, 2002] will contain a call for instrumentation for the Geospace mission. - Another program is the SEC instrument development (SECID) program, a new SEC opportunity based on the Geospace proposal and subsequent recommendation by the SR&T senior review panel. This opportunity will also be described in the ROSS 2002. The emphasis will be on SEC Solar Terrestrial Probe strategic missions and MIDEX opportunities. - Midex proposals are to be reviewed by a panel in 2002, to be followed by the categorization and steering committee meetings. - George Withbroe will be retiring from NASA at the end of January, his replacement is in process. It is hoped that his replacement will be on board at that time. - Headquarters replacements sought: - Jim Sharber's IPA term ends in late spring. - Jim Spann will leave headquarters in the late summer. - In response to a question: In the findings that were made public in August, 2001, the LWS Science Architecture Team recommended the formation of a theory and modeling definition team. 7. NOAA report: Howard Singer gave a report on NOAA: - In July, GOES 12 was launched carrying a new Space Environment Monitor instrument, SXI, a Solar x-ray Imager. The instrument has undergone a successful checkout and is producing excellent images, up to once a minute. At the end of December, GOES 12 was place in on-orbit storage, and will be turned back on when one of the current operational spacecraft is taken out of service. - The Space Environment Center (SEC) is advertising for a staff person, with solar/interplanetary expertise. Opportunity closes January 31, 2002. (SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER, Volume VIII, Issue 113). - SEC is seeking applications for 1 NRC postdoc, applications close January 15,2002 (THE GEM MESSENGER, Volume 11, Number 33). - Space Weather week will be April 16-19, 2002. Terry Onsager is coordinating the Research to Operations portion of the meeting. - SEC has produced a kids comic book on space weather. 8. International liason reports: Brian Fraser reported on the activities in Australia: - The Australian 58 kg microsat, Fedsat, is scheduled for launch sometime between 11/01 and 2/02. It will be in 800 km polar orbit. - The Tiger superdarn radar has been operating for 2 years. It is the lowest latitude superdarn radar. - Newcastle and La Trobe got a joint grant to fund 1 postdoc each for 4 years. - There will be 3 conferences this summer in the southern hemisphere: - 2002 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting Wellington Convention Centre Wellington, New Zealand, 9-12 July 2002 (http://www.agu.org/meetings/wp02top.html). - International conference on plasma physics, July 15-19, 2002 in Manly, Sydney (http://www.ise.canberra.edu.au/ICPP2002/). - World Space Environment Conference, July 22-24, in Adelaide, Australia (http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/itp/workshops/WSEF2002.html). Atsuhiro Nishida, formerly head of ISAS, summarized recent activities in Japan: - Bepi Columbo has been approved - There a plans for a new radar facility in Indonesia as well as one in Antarctica - Hiroshi Matsumoto has been elected president of URSI - The 2003 IUGG meeting will be held in Sapporo, Japan June 30 - July 11 (http://www.jamstec.go.jp/jamstec-e/iugg/) - this is the week before the scheduled '03 GEM workshop. 9. New steering committee memberships. Nominations were taken for new memberships for steering committee. The current membership includes: Borovsky - 02 Gallagher - 03 Greenwald ­ 01 Hudson (chair) - 03 Lyon - 02 Lyons - 01 Moldwin - 03 Russell - ongoing communications coordinator Toffoletto - 03 2 members (Greenwald and Lyons) are scheduled to rotate off in 2002. Several suggestions were given to Kile Baker for new members of the steering committee. (Ennio Sanchez and Gang Lu have since agreed to serve.) 10. Other discussions: - There was some discussion for having official liaisons with the Cedar and Shine community. - There are plans for having 3 review JGR papers on the joint GEM/CEDAR/SHINE meetings. The topics for the papers: 1. Solar / solar wind - led by a SHINE person 2. Geoeffectiveness - led by GEM person 3. MI-coupling - led by a CEDAR person The meeting adjourned at approximately 9:15 pm. January 8,2002 - FRT. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |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. | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+