Several activities related to MAP took place during and just after the 7th Conference on Mesoscale Processes, this year jointly organized by the American and Royal Meteorological Societies in Reading, UK, during 9-13 September 1996. A thirty-minute overview of MAP was given on Tuesday evening at the end of the session on orographic processes. Thereby Philippe Bou-geault and Ronald Smith elucidated the primary scientific objectives related to moist processes and dynamical aspects of flow over and around mountains, whereas Peter Binder made a few statements about the organizational status and structure of the programme. The event was attended by most of the conference participants.
On Thursday evening (8-10 p.m.) a open side-meeting was held for all conference participants interested in MAP. Further insight into the developing major projects was provided by Evelyne Richard (numerical experimentation), Frank Roux (ground-based and airborne Doppler radar), Christoph Schär (gravitiy-wave breaking and PV-banners) and Joachim Kuettner (flow over a mountain pass). These short presentations were intended to stimulate the discussion. Questions were raised, comments made and suggestions proposed by the audience, so that the existing and interested MAP community profited from the open exchange. Overall there were 48 scientists present.
A joint SSC / CIG committee meeting was held on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning after the conference. The major item discussed are summarized in the following.
Most importantly, the IGP decided to shift the field phase from 1998 to 1999 (see page 10). Thus the wort the the CIG and SSC was then based on this decision. The SSC approved the scientific objectives as extended by taking surface hydrology on boeard (see page 11). Furthermore it accepted the aspect of atmospheric electricity (proposed by Prof. S. Chauzy, Toulouse) as a component of the MAP field phase. A fully revised version of the MAP Design Proposal will be available in January 1997.
The strategy for the submission of project proposals to the EU for the second call within the 4th framework programme is different from the first call (HERA): it seems more appropriate to submit several projects of smaller groups with limited funding requests rather than one big proposal. Proper coordination between the small proposals is necessary in order to avoid duplication and thus unwanted competition. The US white paper has been completed and is now under final revision before being submitted to the NSF.
The MAP Data Centre is now open for registration (see page 2 and page 8) and first data sets are available to users. All information pertinent to this matter can be found on WWW under http://www.map.meteoswiss.ch. An issue of major concern for the immediate future is the choice of the MAP Operation Centre. The offer of Innsbruck to host this facility is still valid. Finally, a list of all MAP working groups, counting nine in the meanwhile, is published in this Newsletter #5 as well as the MAP calendar.
