Hurricane Charley - Compound Document

Hurricane Charley at Landfall, August 13th 20:00Z, 2004

Hurricane Charley made landfall at Punta Gorda, Florida on August 13th around 20:00Z. The sudden increase in intensity, and "hard right turn" made Charley difficult to forecast accurately, and provides datasets for research into the cause of such an intensification and change of direction. This document provides the reader access to ancillary data and imagery, as well access to raw data and a client to display this data. This compound document is designed to illustrate the power of publishing via this format, and how it allows the "reader" of the document to further the analysis, see the data as the publisher saw it, and bring in other internal or external datasets to enhance the research and analysis of the event.

AGU Abstract

This paper is an example of what we call data interactive publications. With a properly configured workstation, the readers can click on "hotspots" in the document that launches an interactive analysis tool called the Unidata Integrated Data Viewer (IDV). The IDV will enable the readers to access, analyze and display datasets on remote servers as well as documents describing them. Beyond the parameters and datasets initially configured into the paper, the analysis tool will have access to all the other dataset parameters as well as to a host of other datasets on remote servers.

These data interactive publications are built on top of several data delivery, access, discovery, and visualization tools developed by Unidata and its partner organizations. For purposes of illustrating this integrative technology, we will use data from the event of Hurricane Charley over Florida from August 13-15, 2004. This event illustrates how components of this process fit together. The Local Data Manager (LDM), Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP) and Abstract Data Distribution Environment (ADDE) services, Thematic Realtime Environmental Distributed Data Service (THREDDS) cataloging services, and the IDV are highlighted in this example of a publication with embedded pointers for accessing and interacting with remote datasets.

An important objective of this paper is to illustrate how these integrated technologies foster the creation of documents that allow the reader to learn the scientific concepts by direct interaction with illustrative datasets, and help build a framework for integrated Earth System science.

Ancillary data:

Descriptive summaries

CNN
Wikipedia

Impact Study

USGS

Video and Photos

Charlotte Harbor, Florida
Earth Observatory
USGS
Key West radar

Personal accounts

Library Planet

SuomiNet Precipitable Water Vapor Images

19:30Z 20:00Z 20:30Z

Tracking

Weather Underground
U of Maryland Track with SST's
U of Maryland Track with SST's
Unisys track image
Unisys track data

You do the analysis !!!

If you don't already have Webstart installed, the instructions for doing so can be found at
The Unidata WebStart Instruction Page.

Once you have webstart running on your workstation, the IDV configured with the appropriate datasets can be started by clicking on any ONE of the following links:

You can select either individual datasets (Workstation Eta, Tamba Bay RADAR, GOES-Imagery) or select the "complete set" of data so you can integrate the datasets.

As Hurricane Charley approached the Florida coast, it amplified from a category 2 storm at 13:00Z to a category 4 storm at 20:00Z (landfall). This view displays in 3-D, the iso surface of wind speeds of 18 m/s (~36 mph) from 12:00Z on the 13th to 12:00Z on the 14th. The display also includes wind vectors at the 500 millibar level. The US coastline is highlited in white, and the u component of the 10 meter winds is displayed in a contour plane view. This is output from a workstation_eta model run over the Florida domain. To view this via the IDV select this link:
Workstation Eta

Hurricane Charley's rainfall was greatest near the eyewall, this dataset of Base Reflectivity from Tampa Bay starting at 17:01Z to 20:57Z, shows the intense banding as it comes ashore. The temporal resolution begins at every hour and goes to every 5 minutes starting at 19:20Z. Of course once you load the bundle, you can manipulate the times and duration as you desire, this is the power of a compund interactive document. To view the Tampa Bay radar products select this link:
Tampa Bay RADAR--Use this link if the IDV is already running on your machine.

Tampa Bay RADAR--Use this link if the IDV is NOT running on your machine

Many enjoy the satellite view of a hurricane, to view the GOES-East visible 2km imagery of Charlie, select one of the following URLS..

GOES-E satellite imagery--Use this link if the IDV is already running

GOES-E satellite imagery--Use this link if the IDV is NOT already running.

References:

The Unidata WebStart Instruction Page
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/metapps/webstart/IDV/index.html

Temperature forecasts from NCEP national forecast and high-res. local Colorado Workstation ETA
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/DataPublications/SampleDataPublicationFor2005AMS.htm
Ben Domenico, Jeff Weber AMS 2005
Workstation Eta Homepage
http://wwwt.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/wrkstn_eta/
USGS
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/charley/
Unisys
http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/2004/
University of Maryland
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~stevenb/hurr/04/charley/
Suominet
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/data/suominet/index.html
Library Planet
http://www.libraryplanet.com/2004/08/charley
Weather Underground
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at200403.asp
Earth Observatory
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16639
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WEATHER/08/13/storms/

Contact info: jweber@ucar.edu

Acknowledgment

This material is based in large part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation.

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