The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is a US nonprofit consortium of more than 100 colleges and universities providing research and training in the atmospheric and related sciences. UCAR manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and provides additional services to strengthen and support research and education through its community programs. Its headquarters, in Boulder, Colorado, include NCAR's Mesa Laboratory, designed by I.M. Pei.
The US National Center for Atmospheric Research is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NCAR has multiple facilities, including the I. M. Pei-designed Mesa Laboratory headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. Studies include meteorology, climate science, atmospheric chemistry, solar-terrestrial interactions, environmental and societal impacts.
Walter Orr Roberts was an American astronomer and atmospheric physicist, as well as an educator, philanthropist, and builder. He founded the National Center for Atmospheric Research and took a personal research interest for many years in the study of influences of the Sun on weather and climate.
The High Altitude Observatory (HAO) conducts research and provides support and facilities for the solar-terrestrial physics research community in the areas of solar and heliospheric physics, and the effects of solar variability on the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, and upper atmosphere.
Joshua Michael Aaron Ryder Wurman is an American atmospheric scientist and inventor noted for tornado, tropical cyclone, and weather radar research.
The Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment or VORTEX are field experiments that study tornadoes. VORTEX1 was the first time scientists completely researched the entire evolution of a tornado with an array of instrumentation, enabling a greater understanding of the processes involved with tornadogenesis. A violent tornado near Union City, Oklahoma was documented in its entirety by chasers of the Tornado Intercept Project (TIP) in 1973 and visual observations led to advancement in understanding of tornado structure and life cycles. VORTEX2 utilized enhanced technology allowing scientists to improve forecasting capabilities to improve advanced warnings to residents. VORTEX2 sought to elucidate how tornadoes form, how long they last and why they last that long, and what causes them to dissipate.
Eric James Barron is an American academic administrator who serves as the 18th president of the Pennsylvania State University. Previously, he served as the 14th president of Florida State University and director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Warren Morton Washington is an American atmospheric scientist, a former chair of the National Science Board, and currently senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.
Robert Earl Dickinson is an American meteorologist and geoscientist.
Roger M. Wakimoto is an atmospheric scientist specializing in research on mesoscale meteorology, particularly severe convective storms and radar meteorology. A former director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Wakimoto in November 2012 was appointed as assistant director of the Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) is a high-performance computing (HPC) and data archival facility located in Cheyenne, Wyoming that provides advanced computing services to researchers in the Earth system sciences.
Robert Moffat MacQueen is an American physicist. He received his B.S. from Rhodes College in physics in 1960 where he was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa, and his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1968 in atmospheric sciences. In 1967, he joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) as a staff scientist and attained senior scientist status in 1973. He was principal investigator for the White Light Coronagraph operated by the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) aboard the manned Skylab satellite from 1970 to 1977. In 1974, he received NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for his Skylab work as principal investigator of the white light coronagraph experiment that took nearly 36,000 photographs during the Apollo flight.
Francis Patton Bretherton is an applied mathematician and a professor emeritus of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Richard A. Anthes was a long time president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. The Anthes Building in Boulder, Colorado, is the first UCAR-owned building to be named for an eminent scientist – and a living one at that.” His area of study at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, focused on hurricanes and tropical cyclones. Dr. Anthes taught as a professor for ten years at Pennsylvania State University before accepting a position at the National Center for Atmospheric Research as director of the Atmospheric and Prediction Division in 1981, a position he kept until 1986 when he became director of NCAR. In 1988, he started working as president of UCAR, and retired from that position in 2012. During his presidency at UCAR, he participated or chaired over forty different national committees for agencies such as NASA, NSF, and NOAA. He also established a program aimed at increasing participation in the atmospheric sciences called SOARS .
Rong Fu is a Chinese-American climatologist, meteorologist, researcher, professor, and published author with more than 100 articles, books, and projects detailing changes that occur in Earth's atmosphere and how they affect climate, seasons, rainfall, and the like. Fu has been invited to present over 115 presentations and seminars, and has administered more than 32 projects that received over 11 million dollars in funding. The focus areas of Fu's research are convection; cloud and precipitation processes and their role in climate; atmospheric transport in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere; the interaction between the atmosphere and ocean and terrestrial vegetation; satellite remote sensing applications and retrievals; the interaction between rainfall rates and the rainforest in regions of the Amazon rainforest; and drought prediction in states across the United States, including California and Texas. She is currently a professor in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department at UCLA and the associate director of UCLA's Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering. She is also an adjunct professor in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin.
Rebecca Suzanne Hornbrook is an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). She currently holds the position of Project Scientist II while also belonging to a variety of groups based out of NCAR, UCAR, and NASA. She is notable for her work as one of the leading experts in Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) while possessing an interest in air quality, biosphere-atmosphere interactions, chemical kinetics, and photochemistry.
Maura E. Hagan is a Professor of Physics and Dean of the College of Science at Utah State University. She is a Fellow of both the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.
Everette Joseph is an American atmospheric scientist who serves as the director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.
James F. "Jeff" Kimpel was an American atmospheric scientist with expertise on severe storms who was a provost of the University of Oklahoma (OU) and director of the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL).
