Why now? Why Venice?

Last April (2002) at the ROW-2 meeting near Brest, France it was clear that the HF radar community wants to and should continue to meet regularly to promote the field and exchange information.  Several ideas were put forward at that time for meeting locations and timetables.  One possibility put forth was to meet in Italy in Spring 2003.

The main reasons to call for a meeting (ROW-3) in Italy in Spring 2003 are twofold:

1) There will be a major international geophysics conference in Nice, France on 6-11 April.  This meeting will be jointly sponsored by the American Geophyiscal Union (AGU) and the European Geophysical Society (EGS).  The AGU/EGS conference will bring a number of HF radar scientist to Europe in April 2003.

2) Two significant HF radar projects are underway on the Adriatic Sea during this time frame.  These include a 3-site CODAR/SeaSonde network around Venice devoted to the study of exchange between the northern Adriatic Sea and the Venice Lagoon.  Also underway is a large multi-institution study of the Adriatic Sea circulation sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, SACLANT Undersea Resarch Center, the Instituto Nazionale de Oceanografia Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS) in Trieste, Italy, and the University of Hawaii, among others.  This experiment affords the opportunity to visit one or more field sites for the newly developed WERA HF radar system (more information and photos on WERA are available at: Univ. of Hamburg, Univ. of Hawaii/OGS, Paduan Photos).

2.5) Jeff Paduan is currently on sabbatical at OGS in Trieste.  He will be able to help coordinate the meeting as well as the principal Venice/SeaSonde (Gacic and Mazzoldi) and Adriatic/WERA (Poulain and Flament) presentations.

Why Venice?  Because its Venice!  It truly is a wonderful place and Andrea Mazzoldi of ISDGM has graciously agreed to host the meeting at their institute (on the Canale Grande!).  Venice is conveniently located.  Look for updated travel information on the logistics page.


What should we expect for ROW-4?

We plan to begin the organization for ROW-4 immediately so that a much greater lead time will be available to participants at that meeting, which will likely be around April 2004. The ROW-4 meeting will also be important because it will afford the HF radar community an opportunity to expand and to influence the emerging plans for coastal ocean observing systems, particularly within the U.S. research and operations communities.  We have an outstanding offer from a technology planning branch of NOAA (NOAA/ACT) to sponsor ROW-4 as part of their series on new technologies.  This is an offer that should be considered seriously and acted upon by the end of this year's meeting in Venice.  Please plan to attend both meetings.

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