NASW 2003 Annual Meeting (archived)

12:00 — Board bus outside Marriott, Denver City Center, AAAS Headquarters hotel.

Travel to NCAR's Research Aviation Facility (RAF) at Jefferson County Airport. Enjoy a box lunch and briefing from NCAR staff en route.

Arrive at RAF and view the C-130 Hercules aircraft air sampling and instrumentation abilities.

Travel to NOAA. Possible stops:

• Climate Monitoring & Diagnostics Laboratory, which studies atmospheric gases and small particles and how they influence the Earth's climate, the thickness of the ozone layer and the quality of the air we breathe.
• The Space Environment Center, the nation's official source of space weather alerts and warnings. Space weather alerts and warnings are issued when space weather disturbances may affect people or equipment working in space or on Earth. Disturbances can adversely impact radio navigation, communication, satellite operations, and electric power distribution.
• The Paleoclimatology Data Center coordinates international participation in the compilation of a comprehensive, global, paleoenvironmental database for use by the global change community. Its mission is to provide this community with the paleoclimatology data and information needed to understand and model interannual to centennial-scale environmental variability.

Travel to NCAR.

Visit Mesa Lab Visualization Lab. See visualization demos of climate, aerosol, solar models and representations of real data. Several of these visualizations use 3-D glasses to give the viewer a powerful image of weather/climate models and phenomena.

Possible Demos:

• On July 31, 1996 Typhoon Herb roared across Northern Taiwan resulting in the loss of many lives and damage to property due to high winds, flooding, and landslides. One of the locations receiving heavy damage was the WSR-88D radar facility located at the northern tip of Taiwan. Eventually, the site was damaged by the storm — but not before collecting 8 hours of data. Researchers use advanced computer models and high resolution data collected from the radar installation to study this complex and deadly storm system. This session offers a comparison between observed data collected by the radar installation before it was shut down and MM5 model data generated by researchers at NCAR.
• Sulfate Aerosol Evolution: The NCAR Community Climate Model (CCM3) is used to model sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere that originate from coal burning and smelting operations around the globe. These visualizations show the daily global distribution of aerosols during a single model year.
• El Niño Visualizations: Is another El Niño on the way? The images and animations shown here are visualizations of the El Niño phenomenon that occurred in 1982 and 1997 — two of the strongest El Niño events on record. These visualizations show sea surface temperatures, sea surface temperature anomalies, and cloud cover in the tropics.
• Space Weather: Interplanetary Transient Disturbances Caused by a Solar Magnetic Eruption: Solar Magnetic Eruptions (SME), such as Coronal Mass Ejections and Solar Flares, and their impact on Earth's space environment are the target of this Space Weather research model.

NCAR hosts reception for field trip attendees in their dining facility at the I.M. Pei-designed Mesa Laboratory with a breathtaking view of the Colorado Rocky Mountain foothills.

7:30 (Note that there has been a change in time from 6:30) — Arrive Marriott, Denver City Center

We have added another NASW 2003 Denver field trip on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 12, to National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver.

(If you are signed up for the NCAR/NOAA field trip and would prefer instead to attend this field trip, email workshops@nasw.org. We'll take care of changing your registration.)

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory announces an NASW 2003 Denver field trip on February 12, 2003.

NREL is the nation's premier laboratory for renewable energy research and development and a lead lab for energy efficiency research and development. The lab has invited a maximum of 12 working journalists to visit their facilities and learn more about energy efficiency and renewable energy.

(Note: If you are already registered for another field trip but would prefer to visit NREL, please email workshop coordinator Kimberly Wilson at workshops@nasw.org.)