[Nsa] Comments on draft strategic plan

Fri Sep 13 13:56:59 MDT 2019

Dear NCAR Director and Committee leads /

Dear Everette, Rebecca and Dan,

Thank you for drafting the new NCAR Strategic Plan. I know how much work it
is.  Thus I really do appreciate your work.

I have not previously provided any input to the present strategic
plan.  During the winter-spring of this year, I was on an internal
sabbatical, and since then I was out with surgery until late July.

*I think that an NCAR strategic plan should serve at least 5 purposes:*

Acknowledge

that NCAR is built on fundamental research in many separate disciplines.

Acknowledge

that this fundamental research must continue as a basis for NCAR’s
development.

Acknowledge

that the true strength of NCAR is that the whole of NCAR is greater than
the sum of its parts.

Describe clearly the main tasks that the organization is working on, as
well as what new initiatives and priorities are planned.  Do this in coarse
detail.  Do this for other scientists, government and community.

Recognize our sponsors and funding organizations, as well as the tasks and
priorities that they want NCAR to do.

Recognize our customers, both current and future, as well as the tasks that
they want NCAR to do.

Describe the tasks, that NCAR is working on, in sufficient details that
staff can look at the plan and say “Yes, I belong here. They recognize that
what I do is important”.

*Comments on the current draft strategic plan:*

My first impression on reading this draft strategic plan is that NCAR is
either *incapable*of or *unwilling*to articulate in even coarse detail what
work the organization should do in the next 5 years.

[Strong words, yes, but you asked for comments].

If I was looking at the text from outside NCAR, then my reaction would be
something like:

            “This is a really weak strategic plan for a world-class science
organization.”

and

            “NCAR does not know what its priorities are.”

and

            “Just give us the money; then we will decide how to spend it.”

I believe that NCAR knows very well what its priorities are; there is
plenty of horsepower in the executive, the strategic plan committee, and
through the input that the committee has collected.  Thus the draft
strategic plan could easily have been written with sufficient
coarse-grained detail,  -  had that been the goal.

This leads me to ask why NCAR is apparently *unwilling*to clearly
articulate in coarse details its goals in this strategic plan.

And I really struggle with that.

Prior strategic plans have spelled out both what we do, and what new
directions we want to pursue. This draft strategic plan really only
discusses the new directions.

And I think that it is an affront to our funding organizations.

To substantiate why I criticize the plan for not having even coarse-grained
detail,  consider that almost all disciplinary references have been
removed.  The word

            “mesoscale” does not occur in the plan,

"greenhouse" occurs once,

"trace gas" does not occur,

“reactive” does not occur,

"boundary layer" does not occur,

"aerosol" does not occur,

"cloud" only occur in conjunction with "cloud computing" (twice!),

“uncertainty” occurs once (for a science organization?)

etc.

Basically, the strategic plan has been “sanitized” to an extent, that
almost all disciplinary science references to problems are omitted.  Yet
these, and many more, are exactly the subjects that NCAR staff works
on.  So why not mention them?

         Section 4.2, first bullet point: Develop the next generation of
observational facilities and continue to work with community stakeholders
to identify new emerging technologies. We will lead engineering research,
design, fabrication, and testing that advances both science and technology.

Without any detail around it, the above paragraph is so non-specific, as to
be almost meaningless.

Very major tasks, that NSF has tasked NCAR with carrying out, are not
mentioned at all.  For instance, NSF has probably invested about $150-200M
in observational facilities, the Lower Atmospheric Observing Facilities
(LAOF). They have funded two large aircraft with associated
instrumentation, radars, lidars, ground-based networks, masts, and remote
sensing profilers.  NSF expects that NCAR continue to keep these
state-of-the art, such that NCAR can collaborate with and support
university faculty in NSF funded field deployments, of which scores of
faculty are given grants every year.

Observational facilities have names (e.g., LAOF and Mauna Loa Observatory),
and these names are known and recognized by NSF, by our university
colleagues and by other agency collaborators.  –  So why not call them by
name in the strategic plan?

A major proposal, the $70M Airborne Phased Array Radar (APAR) proposal has
just been submitted to NSF. How can a strategic plan not mention a $70M
proposal, or even the serious effort underlying it?

         Section 4.2, second bullet point:  Develop and enable broad use of
cutting-edge numerical models suitable for a wide variety of Earth system
science endeavours. Central to this, we will implement a unified modeling
strategy, capable of simulating weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry,
and space weather, and engineered for the exascale regime.

But my concern is not just with the observational aspects of the draft
strategic plan.  The plan also ignores mention of the many process oriented
modeling efforts carried out within NCAR, such as Large Eddy Simulations
(LES) of the air-sea interface, of cloud processes, of boundary-layer
development, etc.  (Yes, the above paragraph does discuss models in
plural).  Do these efforts not deserve to be mentioned (maybe also by name)
in the strategic plan?

Finally, in my comments on NCAR being unwilling to articulate in coarse
detail the work being currently carried out and planned:  In the central
unified modeling strategy, there is absolutely no details on what the
priorities are.  For instance, are the key areas among the following?

            Improving the numerical core of the unified model to speed it
up,

            Parameterization of physical processes in the grey zone,

            Surface flux parameterization to high wind-speed regime (30-85
m/s),

            Better turbulence representation around inversions,

            Stably stratified boundary layers,

            Getting the right physical process into marine warm rain
formation,

            Getting ice particle generation based on aerosols as opposed to
temperature,

            Etc., etc.

NCAR should articulate what the most important problems are, in order to
improve the unified model.

Otherwise the strategic plan comes across as:

            “Just give us the money; then we will decide how to spend it.”

The strategic planning committee and NCAR executive could certainly have
written the draft strategic plan with the coarse-grained detail as outlined
above.

But it must have been a very conscious decision to omit all the details and
disciplinary problem references.

Why?

It seems that:   NCAR wants a very generic strategic plan, such that it can
make the greatest change in research direction since its
inception,  -  with a minimum of external influence.

Basically, get the strategic plan externally through the UCAR members and
NSF, and then do dramatic resource allocation changes internally in an
implementation plan.

For instance, in order to pay for the vision with its huge effort to
societally important model output, something has to give or NCAR must have
identified a substantial untapped source of external funding.

Yet the plan does not mention potential future external funding sources by
name; in fact it expressly omits mention the names of all current external
funding organizations (except for two small references to NSF).  We have
many other smaller funders, that are not mentioned.

It seems to me that this draft strategic plan, on purpose, is trying “to
bite the hands that feed us”. This seems entirely counter productive.

I do not know if my assertion is right (passing a non-detailed strategic
plan, followed by internal dramatic resource changes as part of the
implementation plan – out of view of NSF, UCAR members, and others), but
otherwise I cannot understand the writing of a strategic plan, that omits
core responsibilities of NCAR, and that is so lacking in coarse-grained
detail and science.

With kind regards,

Jorgen Jensen

SCI III, Leader of RAF Science and Instrumentation Group

NCAR / EOL,  jbj at ucar.edu ,  720-206-6478
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