Peter Binder, MeteoSwiss, 8044 Zurich, Switzerland
The MAP committees CIG and SSC held a joint meeting on 15/16 September 2000 in Innsbruck. This was the last occasion when the
SSC met. The CIG had its final meeting recently on 8/9 March 2001 in Zurich. This short report summarises the main decisions
taken and provides a short look back to the work of the committees.
At the joint SSC/CIG meeting in Innsbruck Philippe Bougeault reported about the recommendations given by WWRP to MAP:
To show the benefit of coupling atmospheric and hydrologic forecast models for improved flood forecasting (which has been
started by RAPHAEL, in fact) and to integrate societal and economic impact studies. WWRP is prepared to write letters of
recommendation for funding agencies.
In order to get started with the formation of the new MAP Steering Committee, the joint SSC/CIG authorized a panel consisting
of the authors of the BAMS MAP-SOP overview article to compile a list of candidate MSC members for approval by the IGP.
This list is finalized, including a socio-economic scientist, and, at the time of writing, under consideration by the IGP.
SSC and CIG members agreed to make efforts in favour of a better coordination of the mountain meteorology related international
conferences. They agreed that the MAP Meeting 2002 will be joined with the AMS Mountain Meteorology Conference and that such a
joint venture is proposed with the International Conference of Alpine Meteorology (ICAM) in 2003.
It was recognized that the MAP working groups will play an important role to stimulate and pool MAP research in the future.
They shall be encouraged and supported by the official MAP bodies. First actions are planned for Schliersee.
Priority IOPs were selected to stimulate cooperative work between the projects. They link dry and wet objectives. The following
IOPs were defined to get first priority 2b, 8, 15.
With respect to MAP publications two decisions were taken: To explore the possibility and conditions to publish MAP results
as a special issue of a given journal. Secondly, since the MAP Meeting in Schliersee will be the only event with concentrated
presentation of MAP research a special schedule for the publication of the MAP Newsletter was adopted. This was felt to be a
good possibility to document the recent progress of MAP research.
Shortly before Christmas, the MAP Field Catalog on CD-ROM was ready to be shipped to the MAP scientists. The MAP Programme Office
takes care of the distribution in Europe (90 mailings so far), UCAR on the American Continent. There are enough spare copies for
interested users!
A major item on the agenda of the joint SSC/CIG meeting in Innsbruck as well as of the CIG meeting in Zurich was the MDC.
The reports from the Monitoring, Feedback and Advisory Group gave a lot of hints for corrections and improvements. Very recently,
a new user interface has become operational, which makes access to the data much more transparent and easy for the user.
Efforts to fill data gaps and acquire still missing data sets are continuously undertaken. In order to make interaction with the
user more immediate it was decided to establish a more detailed news page and, for each data set, a kind of a pinboard, where
user's comments to the data set can be posted so that subsequent users can profit from the experience of their predecessors.
However, it has to be underlined, that most progress at the MDC can be made, if user feedback is provided! For more detail refer
to the separate article in this Newsletter.
Good-bye SSC and CIG
Both committees, the CIG and SSC were established at the first MAP Meeting 1995 in Bad Tölz, Germany. The terms of office of the chairpersons Peter Binder and Philippe Bougeault were renewed for another three years at the MAP Meeting 1998 in Chamonix. Their terms will again end in summer 2001. As decided in Bohinjska Bistrica in 2000 the CIG and SSC will be replaced by a new single committee, the MAP Steering Committee (MSC). This is a reasonable step, since the tasks of the committee undergo changes after the field phase of MAP. The MSC will be convened for the first time at the MAP Meeting 2001 in Schliersee, Germany.
The number of members of the CIG and SSC has grown during the course of the years, since the workload, the diversity of tasks and the time pressure have increased the more the SOP approached. An indication that the work in these committees was quite attractive is given by the fact that only very few members have withdrawn. The CIG has held 16 regular meetings. CIG members took their responsibility very seriously, there are a number of individuals who did not miss a single meeting during the whole six years of functioning of the CIG. The SSC had 8 regular meetings. There was only one occasion where one chairperson had to be replaced by a deputy. These indicators of stability are a firm sign that MAP has always been a high-priority issue on the agenda of the involved individuals. It is my pleasure to express my gratitude to all those active committee members who have contributed so much to the success of MAP. I shall not forget the invited experts who have regularly and competently supported the work of the official members.
