It is quite something to watch how the MAP planning process is about to converge and materialize into an outstanding field experiment ! What the ideal weather should be, in order to make the MAP community happy, is detailed in Reinhold Steinacker's article. He sketches a strawman scenario, derived from a detailed analysis of the most recent seasons corresponding to the MAP field phase, and addresses the various alert levels to be issued to the operators of the observing systems. During the Special Observing Period (SOP) the MAP Forecast Office (FO) is to issue such warnings not diagnostically, but prognostically ! Peter Parson discusses the organisation of the FO in his article.
The technical and logistical backbone of the campaign is an extremely complex one and consists of the MAP Operation Centre (MOC) in Innsbruck, Austria, the Project Operation Centre Radar (POC) in Milano Linate, Italy, the MAP Data Centre (MDC) in Zurich, Switzerland, the Coordination Centre in the Rhine Valley, and more. Additionally, there are all the necessary complex communication needs to be fulfilled. In response to this challenge the MDC hired a network specialist from Canada, Ann Guy, to help with the installation of a wide area network and to assist the start of the Special Observing Period (SOP). A lot of effort is devoted to the setup of the operation centres in Innsbruck and Milano. Useful information, particularly for participating groups, is included in articles devoted to these issues written by Herbert Pümpel, Giuseppe Frustaci, and Hans Hirter and Hans Richner.
These articles reflect but a part of the ongoing intense planning process culminating in the MAP Implementation Plan (MIP), which is to be the reference hand book for SOP operations. As described in the article of Peter Binder and Christoph Schär, the MIP was laid out during the Ascona Planning Meeting of last October, and will be approved by the IGP in June.
Besides the organisational articles, reflecting the intense preparation of the SOP, there are also scientific contributions in this newsletter. Read Hans Volkert's report on the successfully completed EU project HERA, and the progress report of Baldassare Bacchi and Roberto Ranzi on EU project RAPHAEL. Also, two papers from the MAP community are included. More MAP-related science will be presented during the fifth annual MAP Meeting in Appenzell, Switzerland on 9-11 June 1999. A meeting overview is included in this newsletter. Extended abstracts of this meeting will be published in newsletter No 11 before the start of the SOP still.
Last but not least, I wish to inform you that the Programme Office took over Stephan Bader's job as technical editor of the MAP newsletter. Due to a change in Stephan's job description he no longer can fulfil this important task. All the more I deem it appropriate to thank Stephan very much on behalf of the MAP community for his effort to make the MAP Newsletter an attractive and clear-cut information platform for our programme ; we appreciate it!
Andrea Rossa
MAP Programme Office