Accurate, high-resolution weather forecasts are a critical part of wind energy production. In December, UCAR signed an agreement with Xcel Energy to develop a wind prediction system for the company’s wind energy farms in Colorado, Minnesota, and Texas.

Several red-eye commercial flights were rocked by moderate to severe turbulence as they flew across northeast Kansas early on June 17, 2005. A new study by NCAR scientists Stan Trier and Bob Sharman uses modeling to connect storms in Oklahoma with the Kansas turbulence.

A new UCAR COMET Program course, Weather and Health, will help meteorologists and others broaden their understanding of the impacts of weather and climate on public health.

NCAR, working with federal agencies and universities as well as the insurance and energy industries, has launched an intensive study to examine how global warming will influence hurricanes in the next few decades.

Andrea Sealy, NCAR's Advanced Study Program • If you are from the Caribbean and you're good at math and science, the advice you get is to become a doctor, says Sealy. "But I never liked biology much," she adds. Now she's a researcher at the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology.