Ms. Patricia Phoebus, associate superintendent of the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL's) Marine Meteorology Division, has been elected councilor of the American Meteorological Society. Phoebus' term runs from January 2011 until January 2014. There are 15 councilors, with four new councilors elected each year by the AMS membership, and a fifth new member selected by the other members of the council.
The council is the principal governing body of the AMS and is in charge of the affairs of the society. Some of the council's responsibilities include approving the nominations of members to the grade of fellow and approving public policy statements issued in the name of the AMS. The council also provides oversight of a number of committees, boards, and commissions, such as the commission that grants Certifications for Broadcast Meteorology and for Consulting Meteorologists, the commission that manages the Society's publication program, the commission that is responsible for the society's education and human resources programs, and the commission that monitors and reports on S&T activities, research progression to operations, and topical areas that may lack needed research funding.
Phoebus looks forward to using her professional experience in defining new opportunities for AMS to facilitate increased interaction between representatives of the society's research, academic, and operational/ industrial members. She would also like to form new collaborative relationships with related professional societies, by hosting concurrent conferences with some exciting new joint multidisciplinary sessions.
Phoebus has been the associate superintendent of NRL's Marine Meteorology Division in Monterey, California, since 1997. She works closely with the superintendent in planning, managing, directing, and administering their broad range of diversely sponsored research programs. She also provides management oversight of the division's financial, administrative, personnel, and information technology support functions, and facilitates legal agreements for technology transfer and jointly supported national and international collaborative efforts.
Phoebus is active in the broader meteorological community and has served on a number of national review panels and committees that promote interagency collaboration between Department of Defense, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and other agencies, including the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (Navy Associate Director, 2002--), the initial Technology Transfer Program Committee for the National Unified Operational Prediction Capability, where she chaired the Metrics sub-group, and the Joint Action Group for Operational Community Modeling, which reports to the national Committee for Operational Processing Centers (COPC) under the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorology. Phoebus is a member of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union.
During her 30-year career in the federal government, including 15 years as a full-time research scientist, Phoebus was active in the development and transition of operational atmospheric and oceanographic data assimilation systems for both the Navy and NOAA. She has published her work in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, the Bulletin of the AMS, Weather and Forecasting, the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, the Marine Technical Society Journal, and the Journal of Geophysical Research, and in a number of technical reports and conference proceedings.
Phoebus maintains a strong interest in education. She has been a high school mathematics teacher, a university teaching assistant, and a numerical weather prediction laboratory instructor for the Navy. She served on the AMS board for School and Popular Meteorological and Oceanographic Education, and co-chaired the annual AMS Symposium on Education for four years. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and holds an interdisciplinary master's degree in meteorology, mathematics, and physics, also from University of Oklahoma. She has completed additional graduate course work in oceanography at Naval Postgraduate School, University of Southern Mississippi, and Louisiana State University.
The American Meteorological Society promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, AMS has a membership of more than 14,000 professionals, students, and weather enthusiasts.