Towards a Quarter-Century Collaboration between NCAS-M and ARL: Priorities, Opportunities and Challenges

The NOAA CSC (Cooperative Science Center) for Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (NCAS-M) has been working on research and educational projects aligned with the missions and priorities of NOAA line offices for more than 20 years. It is funded by the NOAA Educational Partnership Program with Minority Serving Institutions (EPP/MSI) to bridge and incentive research to underserved minority students. In this context, there has been an intensive collaboration between the NOAA’s Air Research Laboratories and NCAS-M, not only on student interactions but also with faculty on research topics. This presentation focuses on the past, present, and future contributions of ARL to NCAS-M development. The main interaction of ARL researchers and NCAS-M fellows are through the NOAA Experiential Research and Training Opportunity (NERTO) which the students have an internship at a NOAA facility. Contributions from ARL including students conducted NERTOs at the NOAA-ATDD in Oak Ridge, TN, and the ARL labs at College Park, MD. Also, ARL has been engaged in establishing a long-term upper air observation station at Howard University Beltsville Campus (HUBC). The seeds for long term observation of air pollution meteorology started with early collaboration in Lidar and radiosonde operations that later led to a collaboration with the ATDD and College Park ARL groups. That effort lead to (1) World Meteorological Organization’s GCOS (Global Climate Observatory System) Upper Air Network (GRUAN) activity at HUBC, (2) UrbanNet site at Howard University main campus to better measure urban meteorology in the DC metro area, and (3) interactions in air quality meteorology and dynamics and modeling, specifically using the ASOS ceilometer in interpretation of profile measurements and PBL evolution. Further, these collaborations and their contribution in training and education will be discussed in this presentation.