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NEWS | Dec. 12, 2010

Dr. Richard Hodur Named a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society

By Donna McKinney

Dr. Richard Hodur, recently retired from Naval Research Laboratory - Monterey, has been named a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Hodur is recognized for his long-term contribution to the Navy's numerical weather prediction enterprise as a system developer, a manager, and a leader. AMS Fellows are chosen for having made outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their applications.

His professional career started at the Naval Environmental Prediction and Research Facility, which became the Naval Oceanography and Atmosphere Research Laboratory, and was absorbed into NRL in 1992.

Dr. Hodur is a national asset in mesoscale modeling, says Dr. Simon Chang, superintendent of NRL's Marine Meteorology Division. Hodur has almost single-handedly developed and configured many important Navy operational atmospheric prediction systems, such as the Navy Operational Regional Atmospheric Prediction System (NORAPS), the Advanced Tropical Cyclone Model (ATCM), and the Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS®). In the early years of numerical weather prediction, it was Hodur who developed the first mesoscale data assimilation cycle, using NORAPS, and it was Hodur who demonstrated a relocatable grid capability for mesoscale models, with multiple grid projection options, to meet the Navy's need for support anywhere in the world.

Hodur's more recent significant achievement was the development of COAMPS®, the first U.S. operational non-hydrostatic mesoscale prediction system to provide analyses and predictions at

In his last assignment in government service as the head of the Atmospheric Dynamics and Prediction Branch of NRL's Marine Meteorology Division, Hodur managed the R&D activities of a group that developed and continues to improve the Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System (NOGAPS) and the NRL Atmospheric Variational Data Assimilation System (NAVDAS). It is these analysis and prediction systems that the U.S. Navy and DOD rely upon in the current Global War on Terror. He also directed the effort to develop the first operational weak-constraint 4DVAR variational data assimilation system, the NAVDAS-AR. He has shown great technical leadership and people skills in managing the ONR/NRL air-sea coupled modeling effort, which is the current focus of his personal scientific interest. He directed a diversified and distributed work force with different community cultures to develop Navy's global and coastal coupled systems, which are on schedule for delivery to operations. Hodur's group is also responsible for some of the community's cutting edge research in atmospheric predictability, targeted observing techniques, and probabilistic prediction.

Hodur served on the Second Prospectus Development Team on Research Opportunities from Emerging Atmospheric Observing and modeling Capability of the U.S. Weather Research Program (USWRP). He served on the Science Steering Committee for USWRP, and chaired the AMS Committee on Meteorology and Oceanography of the Coastal Zone. He has served on organizing committees for AMS conferences and frequently chaired conference sessions. He and his group have forged and maintained collaborations with many institutes, such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling in Warsaw, National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Desert Research Institute, Yale University, National Centers for Environmental Prediction, NASA, and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Hodur retired in 2008 from his last assignment in government service as the head of the Atmospheric Dynamics and Prediction Branch.

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