[ESIP-all] Oct 2012 FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC Workshop: UCAR, Boulder, CO, U.S.A

[cosmicworkshop at mail.cosmic.ucar.edu]

Dear Colleague,

We would like to invite you to attend the "Sixth FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC Data Users
Workshop." This workshop will be held at UCAR's Center Green (CG1) conference
facility in Boulder, Colorado, USA from 30 October to 1 November 2012.

The FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC is a joint U.S.-Taiwan mission, launched in April 2006.
Since its launch, FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC has provided more than three million GPS
radio occultation (RO) soundings to support research and operation. As of
March 2012, more than 1,800 researchers from 63 countries have become 
registered users of the data.  Currently, FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC is providing 
between 1,000-1,500 GPS RO soundings per day. At a recent meeting in January 
2012, U.S. and Taiwan sponsors of the mission decided to support the
continued operation of the mission for another four years. The success of
COSMIC has also prompted U.S. agencies to move forward with a follow-on RO
mission (called FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2) with Taiwan that will launch six
satellites into low-inclination orbits in early 2016, and another six satellites
into high-inclination orbits in early 2018. The continued operation of 
FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC and the execution of the FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 mission 
promise to provide continuous high-quality GPS RO data at unprecedented density,
which could greatly benefit research and operations.

The series of FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC Data Users Workshops have been an excellent
forum for a dialogue between RO data providers and data users, and with which
to promote and broaden the applications of RO data in various science
disciplines, including weather, climate, and space weather. A highlight of this 
workshop will be the development of the FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 mission, and the 
opportunities it will provide for the weather, climate, and space weather 
communities with its unprecedented RO data.

More information about the workshop can be found at:

http://www.cosmic.ucar.edu/oct2012workshop/index.html

Registration information will be available at the above URL by 1 April 2012.


We encourage you to give a presentation to discuss your experience with and
plans for using the data from FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC. If you wish to give a
presentation at the workshop, please submit a title and short abstract at the
above website once the registration page is available online on 1 April 2012. 
This workshop promises to be another interesting and stimulating meeting for 
us all. We hope you will attend and will also encourage your colleagues to 
join us.

We plan to host a Student Poster Competition again this year and some
financial support may be available to U.S. student participants. More
information will be provided by 1 April 2012.

We look forward to meeting you in Boulder in October 2012.

Sincerely,

Shu-peng Ben Ho
Chair, Workshop Organizing Committee

UCAR / COSMIC Project 
3300 Mitchell Lane
Boulder, CO 80301