The seventh issue of the MAP Newsletter is the first published under the responsibility of a new editorial board: Christoph SchŠr has handed over to Georg Mayr, who now forms an international Alpine tandem of editors with Stephan Bader. This is the time to express deep gratitude to Christoph SchŠr for the effort he invested to make the MAP Newsletter an attractive and well-recognized communication platform of MAP. Christoph developed the basic concept of the Newsletter and always managed to focus on actual and MAP-relevant themes in each issue. The world-wide distribution of more than 400 copies proves that the relevance of the contents in combination with StephanÕs attractive layout make the MAP Newsletter a successful publication. Thank you, Christoph, for your commitment to the MAP Newsletter! At the same time I wish Georg a good start with "his first issue" and a successful continuation of publishing the MAP Newsletter.
The main part of the present issue is devoted to the extended abstracts of the scientific contributions presented at the 3rd MAP Meeting held in Belgirate at the Lago Maggiore on 11-13 June 1997. This meeting was excellently organized at Villa Carlotta by our Italian colleagues and saw an increased number of participants, now reaching nearly 200. It was the first meeting lasting two and a half days. The extension by one day was justified to accommodate the 43 oral and 63 poster presentations. The fact that only very few announced presentations were cancelled illustrates the high reputation of the meeting.
In addition to the scientific sessions, several MAP working groups and all MAP committees met during the week of 9-13 June in Belgirate. Summary committee meeting reports are included in this Newsletter.
The fact that the meeting was held in one of the target areas of the MAP SOP was especially meaningful for the MAP research radar scientists. They performed site survey trips, by which they changed completely their mind about possible locations for S-Pol and Ronsard. Experiencing nature is still more reliable than inspecting maps!
Only one of the six MAP EU proposal will be funded. RAPHAEL which aims at coupling atmospheric and hydrological prediction models to improve flood forecasting has passed the evaluation process successfully. This underlines the fact, that hydrological aspects have special importance in the EU context. Replacement funding on a national level has to be sought for all the components of the MAP field experiment which had been included in the MAP/SOP proposal. So far, proposers are quite optimistic to find alternatives.
An important but difficult step had to be done with respect to the MAP data access policy. From the intense negotiations between the U.S. and European partners a completely revised MAP data access policy emerged which has become effective by adoption of the IGP. Please read the corresponding article.
The MAP Data Centre has invested a lot of effort to augment the contents of the MAP database. Data collection turns out to be a tedious exercise, but nevertheless we are confident that the goal of offering an unprecedented database to the MAP research community will be reached.
A still pending issue is the choice of the location for the MAP Operation Centre. The two remaining candidates in the evaluation process are Innsbruck and Milano-Linate. The final decision has to be taken by the IGP until the end of this year.
CIG and SSC have debated on the choice of the target areas for the MAP SOP, i.e. the geographical domains where ground-based equipment shall be concentrated to optimally support observation of the principal MAP phenomena. The region of Lago Maggiore for heavy precipitation events, the upper Rhine Valley (upstream of Lake of Constance) for Foehn and the Brenner pass for gap-flow studies have been selected. The envisaged deployment of aircraft widens the scope of observing MAP phenomena far beyond this target areas. The whole Alpine range can be seen as a mission area for the "MAP aircraft fleet".
Preparation efforts will continue and intensify during the coming two years leading to the MAP SOP. Many further challenges will need to be tackled by all of us involved in MAP.
Chairman,
Coordination and Implementation Group