THE NWS/COMET CASE STUDY LIBRARY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Elizabeth Mulvihill Page
DOC/NOAA/National Weather Service, Boulder, CO

Dolores Kiessling
UCAR/COMET, Boulder, CO

Jeff Weber
UCAR/Unidata, Boulder, CO

1. INTRODUCTION

The Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training (COMETÒ) Case Study Library provides meteorological datasets to the university and operational communities. Funded by the National Weather Service (NWS) Office of Meteorology, this project is a collaborative venture between the NWS, UCAR's COMET Program, Unidata, and the Joint Office for Science Support (JOSS).

In the new millennium, the COMET Case Study Library will expand to increase the number of regionally focused cases covering a variety of phenomena and will evolve to support new technologies and data sets. The deployment of AWIPS in NWS offices necessitates the delivery of data in formats supported by the AWIPS software. The CODIAC system, used to distribute the case study data, will be adapted to handle these data formats. Future cases are being selected to include data archived for the AWIPS system.

The events included in the COMET Case Study Library were selected to represent both classical weather phenomena as well as local effects on weather systems and regional differences in summer-time convection and winter storms. In an effort to select cases both of interest to the university community and of operational significance to forecasters, we are collaborating with university faculty and NWS Science and Operations Officers (SOOs) to choose interesting cases and to develop lab exercises to supplement the data. Also, the library contains cases contributed directly by the university community that been used successfully laboratory courses.

2. RECENT ADDITIONS TO THE LIBRARY

The latest cases added to the library reflect our attempts to broaden the regional coverage of our convective events. We have now expanded to include cases from the desert southwest, upper Midwest and the northeastern sections of the United States. These new cases were designed to provide data that focuses on the unique forecasting problems of these regions to address the training and research needs of NWS offices in and near these locations and to provide a broader range of operationally significant cases for the university community to illustrate forecasting challenges. Recent cases include:

· Case 017: 07 August 1997 (Desert SW Severe Weather)
· Case 018: 31 May 1998 (Upper Midwest Severe Weather)
· Case 019: 03 May 1999 (Oklahoma City Tornado)
· Case 020: 15-18 September 1999 (Hurricane Floyd)
. Case 021: 31 October 1998 (Wichita Halloween Flood)

Future cases will include convective events from the intermountain west and the gulf coast as well as winter cases of heavy snow and flooding. More information can be obtained from:

(http://www.comet.ucar.edu/resources/cases/)

3. NEW DATA FORMATS AVAILABLE

As we move into the next millennium, data format requirements for the case studies will be governed by new meteorological display software and new data sources. We have begun to address new requirements by providing our first case in AWIPS compatible (netCDF) format. Having this format available will allow NWS offices (and any other users who run AWIPS in the future) to view these cases in the same setting used in operations. This will offer a more realistic view of the cases in training exercises. As more data formats become available through CODIAC, cases will continue to be offered in the formats currently available.

The current process of filling data requests via the CODIAC system (http://www.joss.ucar.edu/codiac/) involves processing data from raw formats into the requested format. In order to provide access to a variety of data formats, an extensive library of decoding software has been developed. As different formats become available in the university community, the library will be expanded to support those new formats while still providing access to those formats previously available.

4. OPPORTUNITIES FOR PARTICIPATION

Contributions of cases and suggestions for future cases from the meteorological community are encouraged. The library contains one contributed case from the University of Washington (Case 014: 17 - 18 October 1996, Midwest Cold Season Synoptic Storm). Suggestions for new cases and potential contributed cases can be made by sending e-mail to support@unidata.ucar.edu. The case study library is designed to provide a forum for representatives from the university and operational communities to exchange cases that they have found useful in training efforts.

In selecting events to be included in the library, cases that have been used in COMET residence courses are often chosen because of the extensive amount of laboratory exercises and support documentation that has been developed. With this addition information, these cases can easily be incorporated in training activities in universities and forecasting offices.

In addition, any training materials or support documentation developed from cases in the case study library can be submitted for inclusion on the Web. The exchange of such information can be valuable to people looking for interesting case studies and laboratory materials. A Web-based form is available to submit these materials.

5. CONCLUSIONS

The COMET Case Study Library continues to evolve to provide a wide range of cases in support of training and research. The advantage of these cases is that they provide operationally significant events supported by materials that can be used in both operational and university training.

Additional data formats to support new meteorological data display software will help trainers emulate operational settings during laboratory exercises.

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is funded by a cooperative agreement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or any of its sub-agencies.

7. REFERENCES

Davis, E., L. Miller, and J. Adolphson, 1998: Accessing COMET Case Studies on the WWW for Research, Training, and Education. Proceedings, Seventh Symposium on Education, AMS, Phoenix, AZ, January 1998.

NWS, 1999: Service Assessment, Oklahoma/Southern Kansas Tornado Outbreak of May 3, 1999. DOC Service Assessment, 34 pp.

NWS, 1998: Service Assessment, Spencer, South Dakota, Tornado, May 30, 1998. DOC Service Assessment, http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/spenccov.htm

Page, E. M., D. Kiessling, and E. Davis, 1999: Use of comet case studies in operationaland university training. Proceedings, Eighth Symposium on Education, AMS, Dallas, TX, January 1999.

This page was Webified by Jeff Weber
Questions or comments can be sent to <support@unidata.ucar.edu>.

Last modified: Wed Jan 21 15:34:22 MST