ARL’s Roland Draxler receives an OAR Employee of the Year Award – 2011

Congratulations to ARL’s Roland Draxler for receiving an OAR Employee of The Year Award for his outstanding scientific contributions in the NOAA responses to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (beginning April, 2010), the volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland (in April-May, 2010), and the Fukushima-Daiichi, Japan, nuclear power plant incident (April, 2011). In each of these very different events, Mr. Draxler quickly and efficiently adapted and applied the HYbrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model to address atmospheric releases and dispersion of harmful materials.

The HYSPLIT model is a sophisticated atmospheric dispersion tool Mr. Draxler, along with other ARL colleagues, has developed over the past three decades. The model is useful for simulating simple air parcel trajectories, as well as performing very complex atmospheric dispersion and deposition simulations. HYSPLIT is widely used by thousands of people, primarily other researchers, in over 80 countries. The model is made available for download via ARL’s HYSPLIT website. To facilitate the research community’s use of the HYSPLIT model, Mr. Draxler is involved in numerous training workshops held each year. The 2011 training was focused on a single, representative, real-life application.

The OAR Employee of the Year Award is to recognize NOAA Research employees who have made outstanding contributions to the promotion of excellence in the operations or programs of NOAA Research. Winners have demonstrated the preeminence of NOAA Research through their initiative, commitment, effort, and competence

For More Information, contact: Richard Artz