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Program NewsPhysical OceanographyThe Physical Oceanography (PO) Program would like to thank the many people, both in the U.S. and abroad, who have taken the time to read proposals and provide us with thoughtful reviews. These reviews are crucial to the process of proposal evaluation. The Program would also like to express its thanks to the panelists who dedicate a substantial amount of time to reading through proposals and then coming out to Arlington and discussing them. Each May and November, eight panelists spend four days at NSF discussing between 80 and 100 proposals. Funding highlightsThe range of ocean science covered by recent proposals is refreshingly broad. Topics stretch from the dynamics of estuaries and coastal lagoons to the abyssal ocean and cover a geographic range from the sub-Arctic to the sub-Antarctic. From the proposals submitted to the November 2000 panel, 34 awards were made covering 30 science projects. These included one CAREER award, made to Mark Stacey of U.C. Berkeley who is looking at the role of fronts in estuarine circulation and transport. Nine of the awards made had lead PIs who are young investigators. Ten of the 30 projects funded from the November panel involved new field work. Another ten projects involved the final analysis or synthesis of field data already collected. In the past 6 months, the Program has also funded 2 Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER) and co-funded three workshops. One of the SGER’s consisted of field work designed to obtain information about the nature of convection in the Japan Sea near the end of this past winter. This was a rapid-response effort, put together once it became clear that the East Siberian winter was likely to be anomalously cold. The second SGER is testing an idea about a potential mechanism for turbulence and mixing and is exploring whether this would be sufficiently significant to merit a more sustained research effort. Funding OutlookThe Physical Oceanography Program’s FY2001 budget is approximately 4% higher than in FY2000. Physical oceanographers with an interest in interdisciplinary problems have had some success in tapping the financial resources available in Foundation-wide initiatives, particularly the Biocomplexity in the Environment and the Information Technology Research initiatives. Overall proposal success rates in the initiatives tend to be lower than for Division of Ocean Sciences’ core programs. Over the past few years, by using a greater proportion of standard awards, the Program has reduced the proportion of its budget that is committed to out-year funding by roughly 5%. This has been done to increase the Program’s ability to digest the occasional large, coordinated, research program. Examples of potential large programs include efforts to understand the links between western boundary currents and the adjacent gyres, the dynamics and variability of the abyssal circulation, and climate-related dynamics of the extratropical ocean. The Program continues to fund climate-related research and, with the recent emergence of detailed CLIVAR implementation plans, anticipates a growth in the number of CLIVAR-related proposals. In the near future, Global Change research is likely to include significant efforts in the study of the carbon and hydrological cycles. An interdisciplinary advisory group has been formed to advise the Division of Ocean Sciences on research priorities for the study of the ocean component of the global carbon cycle. This group includes researchers from the Physical Oceanography community. More information may be obtained by contacting the PO program officers. OITIAn article in the Spring 2000 OCE newsletter described the efforts of the Ocean Information Technology Infrastructure (OITI) Steering Committee. This group is charged with advising NOPP and, in particular, the NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences and the Office of Naval Research, on strategic planning for meeting the information technology infrastructure needs of the ocean science research community. The OITI Steering Committee has completed its initial draft report which reviews the IT needs of ocean science, describes some of the scientific payoffs of enhanced IT resources, and formulates a set of recommendations. The draft report should be available on the Web for comments soon. For further details, please check the following web site: http://www.geoprose.com/oiti/ regularly. StaffingThe Physical Oceanography Program is currently recruitingfor two positions at the Associate Program Director level or above depending on experience and qualifications. It is expected that at least one position will be filled by a rotator while the other could be filled as a permanent position. In order to maintain broad expertise in the program, we would like to recruit one observationalist (either coastal or open ocean) and one theoretician/modeler. Inquiries of a technical nature regarding these positions may be directed to Eric Itsweire at 703-292-8582. Eric Itsweire (eitsweir@nsf.gov)
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