2002 , Volume 7, Special issue, p.3-4

This special issue of the Journal of Computational Technologies comprises selected invited and contributed papers delivered at the MODAS Conference. Since any part could not give adequate picture of the whole below I’ll try to describe a little bit the event itself. The Conference was devoted to the-state-of-the-art and usage of modern modeling tools and information technologies for Atmospherics Physics and Chemistry with application to environmental studies. It is aimed at filling a gap between basic science achievements and their support and results dissemination by means of modern information technologies. The Conference has been organized by the Institute of Atmospheric Optics (IAO) SB RAS and the Institute for Numerical Mathematics (INM) with financial support of INTAS and of a set of national and regional institutions and taken place at premises of the Limnology Institute (LIN) SB RAS. Program Committee has been headed by academician Valentin Dymnikov and comprised number of internationally recognized specialists in the area. The Conference had been run as a set of consequent sessions devoted different aspects of the theme. The list of Session includes: Atmospheric observations databases, Physics of climate system: regional aspects, Urban and Regional Atmosphere: from modeling to monitoring and risk estimation, Modeling atmospheric & ocean optics, Basic and Applied Information-Computational Systems and Special session Monitoring of INTAS Environmental Projects. During five days of work 8 invited lectures and 24 invited (among them 10 papers on Special session on monitoring INTAS projects), 16 contributed and 53 poster papers were delivered, which occupied near 30 working hours. Papers were presented from 40 institutions from 9 countries. It should be stressed that 14 papers were presented by young scientists alone and in 34 papers young scientists were co-authors. Total number of young scientists participated in the Conference amounts up to 44, which is more then one third of total number of participants. Eight invited lectures of general importance for atmospheric research and applications were presented at the Conference, two of them at Opening/Plenary session and all the rest at relevant thematic Sessions. Their titles explain the Program Committee choice. They are “Mathematical Theory of Climate”, “Mathematical Models of Climate”, “Handling Atmospheric Data”, “Physics of climate system: regional aspects”, “Monitoring, Diagnosis and Predictions of Atmospheric Pollutant Transport”, “Information and Computational technologies for Atmospheric Sciences”, “Towards web Portals on Atmospheric Sciences”, and “Geo-information Technologies and Environmental Monitoring”. Including the lectures into the Program the Committee wanted to add the Conference strong tutorial nature required to introduce young scientists to frontiers of modern Atmospheric Sciences. One the base of the Conference course one can say that this idea was very successful and useful especially under starting at NIS break between generations in scientific community. Summarizing I’d like to add that themes, time and place for the Conference had been chosen rightfully. Participants were unanimous in evaluation of the Conference as being very helpful in their research and applied activity, giving rise to new multi disciplinary cooperation links and providing plenty of information on activity of International Agencies supporting research and applied Projects devoted at environmental issues. It has been suggested to make the Conference a regular one and to organize it each second year in Siberian cities possessing relevant scientific infrastructure. Specifics of relevant problems of the hosting region should be taken into account at process of the Program forming. To save the orientation, spirit and level of the Conference it is suggested to form a permanent kernel of the Program Committee. There are two candidates for hosting the MODAS 2003 Conference: Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk and soon we’ll see where it will take place. The Organizing Committee thanks the sponsoring Agencies and organizations, notably INTAS support under grant MO-01- 168 is acknowledged. While financial support allows to run the event at proper organizational and technical level it is researcher activity which is key element to a successful meeting. On behave of the Organizing Committee I’d like to thank all participants for their valuable input into achievement of this aim.