|
|
| Community Newsletter | Volume II, Number 2, May 2005 |
   |
|
Contents | ||
| Mark your calendars today.
Abstracts are due August 1, 2005
for the 22nd symposium of the Conference on Interactive Information
Processing Systems (IIPS) for Meteorology, Oceanography, and Hydrology
being held at the 86th AMS Annual Meeting. There's a new IIPS session
this year entitled: "Challenges in Data Access, Distribution, and
Use." See the AMS site
for more detail. |
||
Unidata "Under the Hood" at the Mauna Kea Observatory Centerby Steven Businger with Unidata StaffAn intriguing twist in using Unidata data and tools is underway at the University of Hawaii. Meteorologists, Steve Businger, Ryan Lyman, and Tiziana Cherubini, have been supplying the Mauna Kea observatories with custom forecasts to assist astronomers in their work. The Mauna Kea Weather Center (MKWC) provides the Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) with forecasts to optimize astronomical observations. Initiated in 1998 the collaboration provides the observatories with twice-daily forecasts and The MKWC uses Local Analysis and Prediction System (LAPS) to perform high-resolution analyses and nowcasts of local weather conditions to determine optimal viewing. GPS derived precipitable water data obtained from the University of Hawaii Skynet, and lightning data from the Pacific Lightning Detection Network (PacNet) are used in the prediction process. Since 1999 the MKWC has employed MM5 to provide numerical guidance to the forecasters. CONDUIT data distributed by the IDD is used to initialize the model. Since October 2004 two parallel MM5 cycles run daily, one set is run with the LAPS analysis as initial conditions, and one set is run without LAPS. The schematic at right shows the distribution of computational and data resources the MKWC uses. NOTE: the image is adapted from one that appeared in an article published in June 2002 in Bams. (S. Businger, R. McLaren, R. Ogasawara, D. Simons and R.J. Wainscoat. 2002: Starcasting. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: Vol. 83, No. 6, pp. 858-871.) Operational and research goals at the MKWC compliment one another, with both sides of the equation profiting from the collaboration with the astronomy community. Unidata is pleased to be part of the success story. Unidata at the EGU Joint Committee MeetingA snowstorm that blew through the The meeting was unanimously judged to have been a success and likely will be repeated in springs to come. The image at right captures the historic moment. Click to enlarge. You'll find the Users committee members here, and Policy Committee members are here. Software, Projects, and Support UpdatesLEAD: The Unidata LEAD team now has the WRF model running on our local LEAD Test Bed system, which is being steered by an algorithm Steve Chiswell has developed using GEMPAK. For information on the steering algorithm see: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/gempak/wseta/index.html. Contact: support@unidata.ucar.edu for assistance with your software or questions or subscribe to an e-mail list to learn more about the software packages that you use or those you would like to learn more about. Send comments to info@unidata.ucar.edu.
Unidata is sponsored by the National Science Foundation
|
||
nowcasts that inform decisions in selecting and tuning astronomical instruments for successful observations. Forecast variables include atmospheric turbulence, precipitable water, cloud cover, fog, and precipitation, summit winds and temperature, and wind profiles.
The month of April marked the first occasion of a Unidata presence at the European Geosciences Union's annual meeting. This year's meeting took place in Vienna, Austria where several Unidata staff met with a large number of international scientists.Not only were Unidata staff in attendance they collaborated with community members Elen Cutrim (University of Western Michigan) and Stefano Nativi (University of Florence [Italy]) to organize and chair a special session entitled "Earth System Science Data Access, Distribution and Use for Education and Research" which focused on, Earth System Science Data (ESSD) collection, distribution, archival, analysis, visualization and discovery requirements for enabling distributed and scalable solutions in the Education and Research sectors. The session attracted an unexpectedly large number of abstracts possibly indicating a high level of interest in the topic.
