The Open University of Israel

Israel

The Open University of Israel (OU) is designed to provide degree programs of excellence while removing the obstacles to higher education, particularly time and distance, by offering distance education. OU has students located in 60 countries throughout the world, summing to 38,000 students (every sixth student in Israel studies in the OU).

Research activity covers a broad range of areas, including Atmospheric sciences. The OU took a major part in MEIDEX (Mediterranean Dust Experiment), performed on board the space shuttle Columbia in mission STS-107 in Jan 2003. The major mission was to photograph dust plumes over the Mediterranean from space with a multi-spectral camera and to monitor the dust composition from a plane (in situ observation) in order to promote our knowledge on the relationship between the detailed dust composition and its optical properties. The secondary mission was to photograph stratospheric Transient Luminous Events (TLEs). Two OU researchers took part in MEIDEX, Yoav Yair (the project coordinator) and Baruch Ziv (project scientist). They are analyzing the data collected and publish the results in scientific Journals.

Contribution to MedCLIVAR and available facilities

The OU team deals with the climatic regime over the Mediterranean Basin (MB) and focuses on the Eastern Mediterranean (EM). Main activities:

Teleconnections between the EM and the African and Asian Monsoon systems

Detailed analysis of summer heat waves

Tropical plumes over Africa and their influence on the MB

The relationships between the occurrences of the EM synoptic types and local weather conditions

Analyzing the long-term trends over the MB and evaluating the contributions imparted by synoptic and thermodynamic factors

The research will be based on global data bases and regional observations. Statistical methodologies recently developed by the team for the EM will be applied for the entire MB.

Names of the responsible scientist and of other personnel involved

Dr. Baruch Ziv (responsible Scientist).

Brief CV of responsible scientist Education:

B.Sc. in Physics; M.Sc and PhD in Atmospheric Sciences - Tel Aviv University, Israel; Post Doctoral project in the Hebrew University, Inst. of Earth Sciences.

Professional experience:

Weather Forecasting, Lecturing in Synoptic Meteorology and Applied Meteorology

Member of the Israeli Meteorological Society (IMS), the IMS council and the editorial board of the IMS journal.

Publications:

32 articles in refereed journals, in Atmospheric Dynamics, Synoptic Meteorology and Climate