22 August 2008
Amidst the backdrop of Whistler, British Columbia, the American Meteorological Society's Mountain Meteorology Committee recently hosted two events. The first was a Mountain Weather Workshop designed to "bridge the gap" between weather forecasters and researchers. Over 180 students, researchers, and NOAA NWS forecasters attended the workshop including forecasters preparing for the Winter Olympic and Paralympic games being held in Whistler in 2010. The distinguished invited speakers included Robert Banta of CSD, who presented a lecture reviewing recent advances in remote sensing of the mountain atmosphere. The second event was the AMS 13th Conference on Mountain Meteorology, co-chaired by Lisa Darby of CSD and Michael Meyers of the Grand Junction NWS office (both members of the AMS Mountain Meteorology Committee). This was the largest AMS Mountain Meteorology Conference ever held, with abstracts submitted from 25 countries. At the conference, the Mountain Meteorology's Awards Committee presented the first-ever Mountain Meteorology Award to Robert Banta for recognition of his "outstanding contributions to mountain meteorology."
Background: The first Mountain Weather Workshop was held more than twenty years ago in Park City, Utah, organized by Robert Banta. An outcome of this first workshop was an AMS monograph entitled Atmospheric Processes over Complex Terrain, an AMS "best seller." The AMS Mountain Meteorology Committee hosted the workshop, with the goal of producing a new monograph highlighting mountain meteorology work over the past twenty years. All of those presenting material at the workshop will contribute a chapter to the new monograph. COMET/UCAR and the Meteorological Service of Canada also sponsored the workshop. The European Meteorological Society endorsed the conference.
Significance: Papers at the mountain meteorology conference and lectures at the workshop covered many areas, including issues related to forecasting, air quality, and climate. In particular, orographic precipitation, lee cyclogenesis, fire weather, mountain waves, rotors and windstorms, difficulties in modeling in complex terrain, cold-air pools, and air quality in basins were topics of interest. Expanding our knowledge in all of these areas is important to the NOAA goals of Climate, Weather and Water, and Commerce and Transportation, as well as increasing our ability to save lives and property.