Review of the GAPP Science and Implementation Plan (2005)

Katharine L. Jacobs (chair) is an associate professor and specialist in the Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences and Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona. She is also the deputy director of SAHRA, the NSF Center for Sustainability of Arid Region Hydrology and Riparian Areas, and is affiliated with the Institute for the Study of the Planet Earth. Her current research interests include connecting science and decision making, stakeholder engagement, use of climate information for water management applications, and drought planning. She was the director of the Tucson Active Management Area of the Arizona Department of Water Resources from 1988 through 2001 and worked on statewide rural water resources issues and drought planning from 2002 to 2003. In 2001-2002, she worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, focusing on the use of scientific information in policy and decision making. Ms. Jacobs earned her M.L.A. in environmental planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She has served on three National Research Council committees: Valuing Groundwater, Review of the Climate Change Science Plan, and Endangered Species on the Platte River. She was the water sector liaison on the Synthesis Team for the U.S. National Assessment of the Consequences of Climate Variability and Change.

Ana P. Barros is a professor at Duke University. Her primary research interests are in hydrology, hydrometeorology, and environmental physics with a focus on water-cycle processes in the coupled land-atmosphere-biosphere system, the study of multiscale interface phenomena in complex environments, and the predictability of natural hazards. She is a current member of the Space Studies Board and has served previously on the NRC Committee on USGS Water Resources Research and the NRC Committee to Assess NEXRAD Flash Flood Forecasting Capabilities at Sulphur Mountain, California.

Paul A. Dirmeyer is a research scientist at the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies. He conducts research on the role of the land surface in the climate system. This includes the development and application of land-surface models, studies of the impact of land surface variability on the predictability of climate, interactions between the terrestrial and atmospheric branches of the hydrologic cycle, and the impacts of land use change on regional and global climate. Dr. Dirmeyer is chair of the GEWEX Global Land Atmosphere System Study (GLASS) and the GEWEX Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP), and is a member of the interagency Global Water Cycle Panel (GWCP) Science Steering Group, the

International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Integrated Land Ecosystem-Atmosphere Process Study (ILEAPS) Scientific Steering Committee, and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Committee on Hydrology. He received his Ph.D. in meteorology from the University of Maryland.

Aris P. Georgakakos is a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also the school’s Associate Chair for Research, head of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Water Resources Program, and director of the Georgia Water Resources Institute. Dr. Georgakakos’ research includes decision support systems for river basin planning and management; flood and drought assessment, forecasting, and management; hydropower scheduling; agricultural planning; and remote sensing of environmental variables. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in civil engineering. Dr. Georgakakos has also served on the NRC Committee on Utilization of Environmental Satellite Data: A Vision for 2010 and Beyond.

Chester F. Ropelewski is currently the director of Climate and Environmental Monitoring at the International Research Institute (IRI), Columbia University. He started his meteorological career as a weather forecaster for the U.S. Air Force from 1966 to 1970, and he returned to graduate school at Pennsylvania State University in 1970. After a brief stint in the private sector, he joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a research meteorologist in 1974. He joined the Climate Prediction Center of the National Weather Service in 1981 and was chief of the Center’s Analysis Branch from 1990 until joining the IRI in 1998. His research interests include the analysis and monitoring of seasonal-to-interannual climate variability and the analysis and display of climate and environmental data. Mr. Ropelewski’s primary research interests are on the impacts of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation on global and regional rainfall patterns. He received the Department of Commerce Bronze (1987) and Silver (1992) Medal Awards and the World Meteorological Organization’s 1990 Norbert Gerbier Mumm Award for his work in this area. Mr. Ropelewski is author of more than 50 papers in refereed journals in addition to several book chapters, atlases, and technical publications. He has been an invited speaker at the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, NOAA, university seminars, and NRC committee meetings. He was elected a fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2002.

Guido D. Salvucci is an associate professor in the Departments of Geography and Earth Sciences at Boston University. His research interests include vadose zone hydrology, remote sensing, stochastic hydrology, and hydroclimatology. Recent projects in these areas include the estimation of water vapor convergence over the Mississippi River Basin using top-of-atmosphere net radiation and the moist-static energy budget as constraints; estimation of the relation between soil moisture and land-surface fluxes and how that relation scales spatially; evaluation of the impact of large-scale irrigation on boundary layer fluxes in southeastern Turkey using remote sensing data, mesoscale modeling, and the Bouchet-Morton complementarity framework; and evaluating the influence of groundwater dynamics on land-atmosphere fluxes. His work has been published in Water Resources Research, Journal of Hydrometeorology, Journal of Climate, Geophysical Research Letters, and Advances in Water Resources, among others. His service to the scientific community includes being an associate editor of

Water Resources Research, an editorial board member of Advances in Water Resources, and a member of the National Science Foundation’s Hydrology Section proposal review panel. In 2003 the American Geophysical Union awarded him the James B. Macelwane Medal and named him a fellow. He received his Ph.D. in hydrology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Soroosh Sorooshian is Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Sorooshian’s research focuses on surface hydrology, primarily in the area of rainfall-runoff modeling. He has devoted much of his effort to model identification and calibration issues and has developed special estimation criteria to account for the uncertainties of calibration data. Other research interests include the application of remote sensing data for characterization of hydrologic parameters and fluxes and the implication of climate variability and change in water resources. He also consults on problems related to surface hydrology and flood forecasting. Dr. Sorooshian has been a member of seven NRC committees, as well as serving as chair for the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment Panel, and he is currently the chair for the Committee to Assess the National Weather Service Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (AHPS) Initiative. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from California Polytechnic State University, and his M.S. in operations research and his Ph.D. in systems engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Sorooshian is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Hassan Virji is deputy director for Global Change System for Analysis, Research and Training (START), an international nongovernmental organization focused on capacity building and sponsored by the Earth Systems Science Partnership affiliated with the International Council for Science (ICSU). START has a working relation with the Third World Academy of Sciences and the International Foundation for Science. Dr. Virji has a wealth of experience in ICSU and the international science community. Prior to his current position, he served as executive secretary of the U.S. Subcommittee on Global Change Research, as deputy executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, as associate program director of the Climate Dynamics Program of the National Science Foundation, and on the faculty of the University of Nairobi. Dr. Virji received his Ph.D. in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin. He is a member of the NRC’s Board on International Scientific Organizations and the Climate Research Committee.

Leah Probst is a research associate for the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate and the Polar Research Board. Ms. Probst has worked on a wide variety of NRC studies, ranging from climate and air quality issues to studies on ecology and wildlife management. She is currently working on a study on rainfall measuring missions and a study on weather and climate forecast uncertainty. Ms. Probst holds a B.A. degree in biology from the George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Parikhit Sinha is a former program officer for the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. He received a B.A. in environmental engineering sciences from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington, Seattle. His doctorate research involved airborne measurements and chemical transport modeling of trace gas and particle emissions from savanna fires in southern Africa. He joined the National Academies in 2004 and worked on studies addressing radiative forcing of climate change, rapid climate variability and change in Asia, climate change indicators in the United States, and reconciling temperature trends from different observing platforms.

Elizabeth Galinis is a senior program assistant for the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. She received her B.S. in marine science from the University of South Carolina in 2001. Since her start at the National Academies in March 2002, she has worked on studies involving next-generation weather radar (NEXRAD), weather modification, climate sensitivity, and radiative forcing of climate change. Ms. Galinis is pursuing a master’s degree in environmental science and policy at Johns Hopkins University.