Table of Contents

• Millersville: Unidata's Point Site
• Multifaceted COMET Case Studies: A Study of Case Studies
• PAGE: Talking with the Community
• Last Summer's [1997] Workshop: An Ambitious Mix of Science and Pedagogy
• Profiler Data Available via IDD
• NCEP Model Data Using LDM/IDD Technologies
• Comings and Goings

Millersville: Unidata's Point Site

Editor's note: Millersville University, nestled in southeastern Pennsylvania, has a small group of meteorologists with a disproportionately large effect on the Unidata Program: in addition to their active involvement on UCAR and Unidata committees and participation in training and workshops offered by UOP, every day they manage the Unidata "floater" images. I caught up with one of their faculty members at the AMS in Phoenix for an update on this remarkable group.

by Sally Bates, Unidata Program Center

"This is a big year for us," Rich Clark told me. "In August, Millersville's new $12.1 million science complex is scheduled for completion, and we [the meteorologists] are destined to occupy the penthouse location. This will be an enormous improvement from an 8' X 10' 'weather closet' and small synoptic meteorology lab (about 22' X 22 to a 7,000 square-foot facility with space for a 24' X 36' weather station, four large labs for teaching and research, a cold room, and access to a rooftop terrace where we can place instrumentsand have lunch. We'll also share with other departments a 144-seat state-of-the-art auditorium equipped with high-end audio-visual technology, Internet connectivity at every seat, and a divided, rotating stage that allows an instructor to create a blackboard presentation for a class while another class is in session. The new facility is going to make a difference in how we structure our courses, integrate technology, and incorporate existing and yet-to-be-developed interactive learning tools into the curriculum. We can't wait!"

The Millersville meteorology program has a current enrollment of 90 majors and the following full-time staff members:

• Richard D. Clark, whose interests focus on observational boundary-layer dynamics using aircraft and tethered sounding systems; thermodynamics; physical meteorology; and statistical methods
• Robert S. Ross, the senior faculty member, who specializes in synoptic, mesoscale, and tropical meteorology
• Sepideh Yalda, a full-time temporary faculty member with interests in climate and modeling
• Eric J. Horst, staff meteorologist, weather station manager, and Webmaster, whose interests focus on medium-range and winter forecasting
• Network manager David Fitzgerald, a scientific computing applications specialist responsible for systems management and network administration of the MetNet
• Yin Soong, a physical oceanographer, who teaches computer applications and shares in a team-taught air-sea interactions course for meteorology majors

"We teach a full range of courses," Rich explained to me, "from an introductory survey course The Atmosphere that reaches about 500 non-science majors a year and includes an optional lab, to a comprehensive sequence of upper-level meteorology required courses and electives, both with and without labs. It helps that each of us have rather different meteorological interests," he added. "We're lucky in that we can broaden the scope of our curriculum simply by teaching what interests us most."

The meteorology faculty are active in the UCAR and Unidata communities. Rich Clark is a member of UCAR's University Relations Committee, is Millersville's representative to the UCAR Academic Affiliates, and is a member of Unidata's Users Committee. Bob Ross has participated in the COMET Mesoscale Meteorology course, Unidata Gempak training, and last summer's Unidata Users Committee workshop on Using Satellite Data and Computing Technologies for Research and Education. Bob also spent his sabbatical leave at COMET and is spearheading the department's involvement in PAGE. (COMET modules have been incorporated into the curriculum and are used extensively by students and faculty as learning and visualization tools.) Eric Horst manages the daily Unidata floaters and, in return for this chore, Millersville receives the NIDS floater sites in addition to their regular subscription. Eric estimates that it takes 15-45 minutes daily to set the parameters depending on the weather situation.

The last year has been a rough one for Millersville due to the loss, in June 1997, of an extraordinarily loved and respected colleague, Russell L. DeSouza. Russ took an active interest in the Unidata community. He became a member of the Unidata's Users Committee in 1988 and was invited to serve as a member of the Policy Committee in 1990. Russ also had an impact on UCAR by suggesting the need for a voice within UCAR for non-Ph.D.-granting institutions. Working with Rick Anthes, he spearheaded the creation of the UCAR Academic Affiliates Program and saw Millersville become a charter member in 1991. It was Russ who volunteered Millersville to maintain Unidata's educational floater channel, which has since been expanded to include a second GOES channel to support research and another channel for radar data.

In memory of Russ, the Department of Earth Sciences established a meteorology endowment fund. The fund has already received significant contributions from an amazing network of friends and colleagues, many affiliated with UCAR/NCAR. Interest from the endowment will be used to support the MetNet, something Russ would have appreciated. "In addition, we plan to name the new weather station after him," Rich said.

"In part because of Unidata, meteorology is one of the more visible programs at Millersville. The move to IDD forced us to make an urgent push for campus connectivity well beyond what existed at the time. Russ became involved as chair of the Millersville University Network Implementation Committee to help steer the process. I was a member of the Academic Computing Advisory Committee, and we all directed our efforts toward bringing about the MetNet," Rich noted. "Today we have a fast, robust, and reliable fiber network and augment the IDD as a second-tier relay site with very little down time. Eric also does much to keep the program on the front page. He maintains the Web pages for the geology, meteorology, and oceanography programs, and his forecasts, aided by Unidata products, alert campus emergency services and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation of impending and potentially hazardous weather conditions. In addition, he provides guidance for students and the general public through forecasts and articles on weather in the campus and local newspapers. Another of Eric's responsibilities is to supervise the more than 40 meteorology majors who forecast for the Campus Weather Service and distribute their forecast via the Internet, voice recordings, and hard copy."

"The Unidata grants program has been an important mechanism for equipping our labs with the Sun servers and workstations that compose the MetNet," Rich said. "In conjunction, we are fortunate to have a dean, Al Hoffman, who understands the importance of technology to meteorology. He goes the distance to provide matching funds for equipment and instrumentation grants. His support, and that of our department chair, Charles Scharnberger, a geologist, has enabled us to take full advantage of the resources that Unidata provides, including participation in the proposed development of SuomiNet. All in all, this favorable combination of supportive administration; dedicated professors and staff; continued innovation from the folks at Unidata; and the new facility, should guide a healthy program into the new millennium."

Unidata recently added a new data stream to the IDD: six-minute wind profiles made available on an experimental basis by NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory. The data are collected by the NOAA Profiler Network32 wind profilers located mostly in the central United States. (To quote NOAA, wind profilers are upward looking, highly sensitive Doppler radars that can measure the winds above the profiler site. They are specifically designed to measure vertical profiles of horizontal wind speed and direction.) Unidata staff have created decoders that allow both McIDAS and GEMPAK to display these data. As with other experimental data products provided by Unidata, use of the six-minute profiles is restricted; they are for educational and research use only. For more information on this new data stream, see http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/data/exp.prof.html. Any questions about accessing the profiler data stream should be directed to support@unidata.ucar.edu.

Multifaceted COMET Case Studies: A Study of Case Studies

by Linda Miller, Unidata Program Center

Have you checked the online COMET case studies using the CODIAC Data Management System yet? To get a look at what's available, point the nearest Web browser to the case studies page.

A short time ago, we questioned the Unidata and NWS Science Operations Officers (SOOs) communities to see how they are using the case studies in their classrooms and offices. We were happy to receive some interesting and diverse responses. The following information has been captured from the notes sent to us. We are hoping that, by providing actual case studies on the use of the case studies, you might find an application for them at your site, too.

Be sure to contact support@unidata.ucar.edu if you have comments or questions regarding the COMET case studies.

Dan St. Jean, NWS, Boise, Idaho, writes:

I proposed to use the COMET case study 007 as part of a satellite training plan for our forecast staff here in the Boise office. The case was familiar to me from the COMET Satellite Meteorology course in May 1996.

The case features about 36 hours of satellite, observational, model, and radar data for northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming, and the Nebraska panhandle.

The forecast staff was split into several two-person teams, and they approached the case in a delayed-real-time fashion. I drew up a worksheet which took them through several time steps and asked them to compose forecast precipitation and snowfall amounts in the study area. The forecasters were given the option to update these forecast amounts based on new data they received during the course of the exercise.

Several weeks later, I conducted a seminar which presented verification of the event, and during which there was much discussion among the forecasters about the case. I believe the exercise required the forecasters not only to initiate the forecast process, but also to better utilize and correlate the forecast tools available to them in constructing a well-conceived and meteorologically sound forecast product.

This case study was acquired directly from the COMET staff in May 1996 (the CODIAC system was not available at that time); however, the latest case available from COMET/CODIAC is the California flood of New Year 1997, and is of interest to our office fo r a potential hydrology and meteorology training tool. Having visited the CODIAC Web site, I've found that acquiring this case study and future data sets from CODIAC would be convenient and relatively easy to use, and I will likely use this method for acquiring the California flood case data sets.

Charlie Paxton, SOO at NWS Tampa Bay, Florida, describes the use of the Storm of the Century case study for a National Geographic Society (NGS) video shoot in October of last year:

I had ordered the COMET case study for the Storm of the Century. The data came on 8-mm Exabyte tape, and the data set was laid out in the standard GEMPAK directory structure. All that was needed to redirect GARP to the data was a quick change in the garp_defaults file. This was a tremendous success! The NGS crew didn't have any shots of satellite, radar, or model data, but we were able to provide them with animated graphics from the storm! Ron set up colorful loops depicting the jet stream and satellite and radar images. Our thanks for NWS funding of COMET and the work being done with the COMET case study archive with COMET, Unidata, and JOSS.

Professor Steven Koch at North Carolina State University has made use of two of the COMET case studies and the N-AWIPS visualization package for his senior-level course titled Weather Analysis and Forecasting (MEA 444).

The two cases are the "Superstorm Blizzard" on March 13, 1993, and a bow echo event that affected Missouri and western Kentucky on May 5, 1996.

The blizzard of '93 case study data was first acquired from COMET on 8-mm tape in January 1996 for use in that semester's offering of MEA 444.

Nearly 2 GB of sounding and surface data; model analyses and forecasts; satellite image loops; and NEXRAD images were downloaded, and the files were then organized for easy access by the students.

The pregenerated model graphics metafiles contained in the case study are a big advantage; students needed to spend much less time preparing such graphics on GEMPAK, an activity which emphasizes programming at the expense of understanding. Previous classes had complained about the time required to generate model-based analyses compared to that needed for the interpretation of those analyses.

Storm-relative isentropic analyses were created from the model metafiles for comparison with data in the NTRANS metafiles. The isentropic analyses files were contributed back to COMET and are now available as part of the case study.

Another decided improvement made possible with the blizzard case study was that the radar and satellite images could be easily manipulated in a graphical user interface (GUI) environment called NSAT. This allowed students to readily examine the cyclone's evolution in multispectral satellite imagery for comparison to the analyzed and forecast vertical motion and moisture fields, and to see from the Melbourne radar the detailed aspects of the severe squall line that ravaged Florida.

The looping capability helped students to relate the diagnostic analysis of the model fields to the patterns of cloudiness and water vapor. At the time that this course was offered, detailed radar image loops were not yet widely available on the Internet, so this was rather novel.

The second COMET case study which has been used in MEA 444 is a derecho (long-lived damaging windstorm) event. This data set was acquired in January 1997 from 8-mm tape, though the CODIAC interface for ordering the COMET case studies had come on line by that time.

The value of this case study is several-fold for a class in weather analysis and forecasting: first, it shows students that the role played by quasi-geostrophic dynamics in the evolving weather was different from the role of those same dynamics in the blizzard of '93.

Second, the derecho event allowed the students to apply concepts taught in the lectures about the environment, forcing, and nature of convection. The satellite and radar images and software for manipulating them proved to be truly exceptional tools for this purpose.

Finally, several of the prepared NTRANS diagnostic fields directly related to the severe convection forecast problem without the need for the students to spend more time creating the fields than studying the results, just as in the blizzard case. The pregenerated, color-contour-filled graphics once again allowed the students to quickly step through several scales of motion to study the various processes with ease. In fact, the number of graphics was overwhelming, requiring the instructor to carefully select for the student which analyses to study.

The experience at NCSU has been that having an essentially complete digital case study with previously generated model graphics and a flexible and powerful graphics manipulation system represents a remarkable aid to teaching weather analysis and forecasting. The COMET case studies are truly a gold mine for teaching of synoptic and mesoscale meteorology.

Julie Adolphson is currently the SOO at the NWS station in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but prior to that she was one of the people at COMET who helped to create many of the currently available case studies. She had this to say about how the case studies will be appli ed in her new position:

I'll be using case 005 to train forecasters on lake effect snow here at our new Northern Indiana office. Also, I'll be downloading images from case 006 (and possibly others) to train TV meteorologists on Doppler radar interpretation."

PAGE: Talking with the Community

by Sally Bates, Unidata Program Center

On a schedule as hectic as any tourist's, Mary Marlino and Ben Domenico spent the fall traversing the continent to assess how UCAR might help educators incorporate new teaching methods and technologies into their classrooms. All this effort was focused on the development of UCAR's new Program for Geoscience Education (PAGE), a direct outgrowth of calls to UCAR from the Unidata community for help with incorporating multimedia resources in the classroom. (Last summer's workshop [see p. 6], which focused on helping participants create Web-based classroom materials, was also a response to this "call for help.")

With funding from the National Science Foundation, Marlino, acting director of PAGE, organized six focus groups to help her identify what the community needed most. She was aided in this by co-principal investigator Domenico (who is also manager of the Unidata Program). A list of the locations and participants of the six groups is available on the PAGE home page.

While the groups varied considerably in composition and size, there was close agreement on four general areas. All participants would like PAGE to provide the following services:

1. A Web-accessible clearing house of geoscience-related educational materials,
2. Multimedia materials from the COMET modules in a web-
   accessible form,
3. Workshops on pedagogy and technology,
4. Assistance with assessing and evaluating their courses.

PAGE staff have submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation for funds to begin addressing some of these needs. Specifically, they have proposed to build a prototype index/catalog/search-engine system that will give users a central site where they can search for and contribute to geosciences course materials. The idea is to build a distributed system that allows materials to reside at any site on the Internet, but with a central index/catalog. A test of the system would involve populating the prototype system with some components of the COMET learning modules and with resources already existing within the university community.

PAGE is now analyzing the information from the focus groups to design a community survey with the goal of identifying existing resources and specific resource needs.A more detailed summary of the focus-group process is available on the PAGE home page (webpage no longer available).

Last Summer's Workshop: An Ambitious Mix of Science and Pedagogy

by David Dempsey, San Francisco State University and Melanie Wetzel, Desert Research Institute

Last June, 65 people convened in Boulder to attend the Unidata workshop "Using Instructional Technologies and Satellite Data for College-Level Education in the Atmospheric and Earth Sciences." For one week participants divided their time between listening to presentations and working in labs to create online modules for classroom use.

Organized by the Unidata Users Committee, the workshop was cosponsored by Unidata, the UCAR COMET program, and the National Science Foundation. The workshop organizers had three goals: 1) to inform university scientists about how technology and computer-based interactive learning can improve education; 2) to discuss how GOES and other new satellite data sources might be used in teaching and research; and 3) to increase student understanding of interdisciplinary environmental processes. The program was ambitious. In designing the workshop, we struggled to find the right balance of science and instructional issues. University faculty needed information on how to use data from the range of new observing satellites now in orbit, and they also wanted to become familiar with new teaching techniques and the use of multimedia presentations in the classroom. Our decision not to focus exclusively on the uses of satellite data was based in part on COMET's plans to hold a two-week faculty course on satellite meteorology in the weeks before our workshop. (Unfortunately, the course was cancelled after the workshop program was set.)

Our presentations had overviews on some uses of data from satellite-borne instruments. Steve Ackerman (University of Wisconsin­Madison) described his course on remote-sensing instruments; John Christy (University of Alabama­Huntsville) spoke on using sate llite microwave data to map atmospheric temperatures; John Merrill (University of Rhode Island) described using satellite observations to map particulate aerosol over the oceans; Jim Purdom (NOAA) provided an overview of satellite meteorology; and Chris Velden (University of Wisconsin­Madison) demonstrated the use of satellite water-vapor imagery to teach concepts in atmospheric dynamics and weather forecasting. The instructional design portion of the workshop had two components: formal presentations and hands-on laboratories, where participants were encouraged to begin developing Web pages for use in their classes. Tom Reeves (University of Georgia) spoke on the importance of mental models in science education; Gene Takle (Iowa State University) demonstrated the online materials for his course on global change; Paul Ruscher (Florida State University) described his experiences in creating a course on satellite meteorology and remote sensing and demonstrated his Web-based course for public-school earth-science educators. In designing the lab activities, the Users Committee decided to focus on Web technology as the medium, but we were unsure how familiar with HTML the participants would be. When a pre-workshop survey revealed that some were novices, we decided to include a brief introduction to Web authoring. In addition, the COMET staff created Web templates and made Web-authoring software packages available on the workshop server.

Participants were assigned to one of three labs according to their interests in survey courses in meteorology and earth sciences; weather forecasting and mesoscale process; or climate, hydrology, and earth atmosphere processes. Lab time included a few presentations on pedagogical concepts and instructional design principles and discussions of participants' instructional objectives. Unidata and COMET staff were on hand to provide information on accessing and processing satellite data; they had also prepared a set of images from COMET modules and recent data that participants could use in designing their modules. There were HTML experts in the labs to give a hand when needed. Judging from the exit survey, the workshop was a success. The number of people wanting more science was about evenly balanced with the number of people wanting more instructional design work. The Users Committee intends to question participants to find out how many actually implemented Web-based course materials when they returned to their campuses. We have submitted a description of the workshop for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Profiler Data Available via IDD

Unidata recently added a new data stream to the IDD: six-minute wind profiles made available on an experimental basis by NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory. The data are collected by the NOAA Profiler Network32 wind profilers located mostly in the central United States. (To quote NOAA, wind profilers are upward looking, highly sensitive Doppler radars that can measure the winds above the profiler site. They are specifically designed to measure vertical profiles of horizontal wind speed and direction.) Unidata staff have created decoders that allow both McIDAS and GEMPAK to display these data. As with other experimental data products provided by Unidata, use of the six-minute profiles is restricted; they are for educational and research use only. For more information on this new data stream, see (links no longer available) . For more information on the NOAA Profiler Network, see (links no longer available). Any questions about accessing the profiler data stream should be directed to support@unidata.ucar.edu.

NCEP Model Data Using LDM/IDD Technologies

by Linda Miller, Unidata Program Center

Facilitating access to experimental model data from the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) promises to increase interaction between the Unidata and the U.S. Weather Research Program communities. Unidata has been working jointly with staff from the National Weather Services Office of Meteorology and Office of Systems Operations, NCEP, and NASA-Goddard to provide the technology, through use of the IDD/LDM, for timely access to model data. High resolution and ensemble model output are examples of data sets which are sought after by many sites but which are currently often difficult to obtain reliably. Making this service available to the broader research community will enable researchers to work together and to use the model data important for regional and national research activities, including associated U.S. Weather Research Program goals.

Testing is already underway, and implementation will begin soon. Unidata will provide additional information about this project and the availability of other experimental data as they become available. Announcements will be sent out by Unidata support with data descriptions, volumes, and guidelines for accessing the data sets.

Comings and Goings

This issue of the Newsletter finds some new faces in the Unidata Program Center and sees some old hands departing.

New to the software development group is John Caron. John comes to Unidata from NCAR's Atmospheric Chemistry Division where he worked on developing models and visualizations for studying global tropospheric chemistry. Prior to that he worked at NCAR's Research Aviation Facility where he helped to create weather monitoring displays for air traffic controllers. John notes that it was during this project, which required lots of current weather data for testing, that he began to develop ties to Unidata.

John will be working on Unidata's next-generation meteorological software, to be developed using Java. He's also pursuing his master's degree in computer science, in the course of which he has developed a keen interest in Web-based collaborative technology. If any of our readers shares this interest, John invites you to send him e-mail at caron@unidata.ucar.edu.

System administrator Sandy Whitesel has also joined the crew to help keep Unidata's many systems up and running. Last spring, Sandy left his system administrator job in Blacksburg, Virginia, where he had been living since his graduation from Virginia Tech. Sandy bought a van and he and his girlfriend spent the next three and a half months roaming the country. When they rolled into Boulder in October, they decided they had found their new home.

When he's not installing Linux or performing traceroutes, Sandy enjoys playing drums, brewing beer, and racing motorcycles.

Unidata Employee Distribution System

Late last year saw the departure of user support programmer Mitch Baltuch. Mitch was part of the team that developed and deployed the IDD system. In that effort, Mitch headed the IDD deployment; provided user and e-mail support; developed network and connectivity monitoring tools; taught LDM training classes; implemented IDD routing topology; wrote portions of the documentation; and provided liaison with the test sites. Mitch took a software engineering position with a Boulder startup company and we wish him all the best.

Onward and Upward

Sandra Nilsson, Unidata's program administrator, has moved on to another position within UCAR. As of March 9, Sandy is the administrator for Atmospheric Technology Division (ATD), the division within NCAR that oversees NCAR's various observing facilities (planes, radars, and weather stations).

After eight years with Unidata, there are few facets of the program that have not benefited from Sandy's knowledge of program goals and resources and her skill at juggling the many demands on her time. Her ability to remember the details as well as the broad picture have been demonstrated in such varied arenas as the planning and logistics of last summer's Users workshop, Unidata's negotiations with vendors for data, the licensing needs of particular institutions, and, of course, Unidata's proposal to th e National Science Foundation. In many of these endeavors, Unidata benefited from Sandy's previous experiences with Ball Aerospace as a business analyst and contracts negotiator. "I will miss the many wonderful people that make up the Unidata community, " Sandy commented, "but I'll be taking with me the experience of working with a community that truely functions as a community. This has given me a perspective that I'm sure will be useful in many ATD activities." We wish her well.

Greener Pastures

At his new company, Matt will be focusing on Web development using cutting-edge technologies; and we're sure his new employers will find use for his fine editing skills.