UWM student Charles Smith

The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee (UWM) offers bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in the atmospheric sciences. The program, which consists of 7 faculty and approximately 15 graduate and 30 undergraduate students, prepares students for career pursuits by stressing breadth of knowledge in course studies in the various sub-fields of atmospheric science and the development of quantitative thinking through a unique emphasis on the mathematical and computational aspects of the discipline. In addition, the program offers students real operational experience through the Innovative Weather Program (IW), where students provide weather-based decision support for paying community clients. Through IW and other initiatives, the program maintains strong ties with regional employers in both the private sector and the National Weather Service, where many of our recent graduates have been placed.

Unidata offers equipment grants to support a variety of projects

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2013 Unidata Community Equipment Awards solicitation. Created under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, Unidata equipment awards are intended to encourage new members from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the geosciences to join the Unidata community, and to encourage existing members to continue their active participation, enhancing the community process. For 2013, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.

Rutgers students use real-time data to pilot an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

The Coastal Ocean Observation Lab at Rutgers University (RU-COOL) is using Unidata and other open source technologies to collect, process, and make available a wide range of ocean data for use by students and researchers. Their collection of real-time and historical oceanographic datasets will aid in understanding the physical and biological ocean processes impacting the Mid-Atlantic region, leading to improvements in maritime safety and ecosystem-based management strategies.

Students in the University of Salento's Advanced Data Management course

Climate Change research is becoming an ever more data intensive and oriented scientific activity. Petabytes of climate data are continuously produced, delivered, accessed, and processed by scientists and researchers at multiple sites at an international level. The Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change (CMCC) and the University of Salento in Italy are using equipment purchased with a Unidata Community Equipment Grant to help students study climate change issues at both global and regional (Mediterranean area) scales.

Video display wall at the NOAA/CDC Lab in Boulder

The University of Colorado at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) Climate Diagnostics Center (CDC) maintains a repository of climate datasets that is used daily by researchers and educators at CIRES and around the world. These datasets are being used to answer questions about the Earth's climate system, such as the cause and nature of extreme climate events like the 2010 Russian Heat Wave. We received funds from the 2011 Unidata Community Equipment Awards program to purchase a new server to enhance and expand our existing THREDDS Data Server (TDS) capabilities and establish a RAMADDA server at the CDC in order to provide end-to-end data services that facilitate research and education in the climate sciences.

Student using the THREDDS server to acquire Landsat imagery.

New Mexico State University's community data portal uses Unidata's Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services (THREDDS) Data Server and Repository for Archiving, Managing and Accessing Diverse Data (RAMADDA) server applications. The portal makes data sets that have been archived at NMSU's Center for Applied Remote Sensing in Agriculture, Meteorology and Environment (CARSAME) and New Mexico Climate Center available to the public.

Unidata's LDM, THREDDS, RAMADDA, and other technologies play integral roles in Pennsylvania State University's provision of meteorological data to their own students and researchers and to the wider university community. A 2011 Community Equipment Award helped Penn State upgrade some of their servers to be more capable and reliable.

Unidata is happy to announce the Community Equipment Award recipients for 2012. Three institutions received funding this year:

• Iowa State University
• Valparaiso University
• University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

The Unidata Program Center would like to remind members of our community that the deadline for the 2012 Unidata Community Equipment Awards is March 9, 2012.

Created under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, Unidata equipment awards are intended to encourage new members from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the geosciences to join the Unidata community, and to encourage existing members to continue their active participation, enhancing the community process. For 2012, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.

Unidata offers equipment grants to support a variety of projects

The Unidata Program Center is pleased to announce the opening of the 2012 Unidata Community Equipment Awards solicitation. Created under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, Unidata equipment awards are intended to encourage new members from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the geosciences to join the Unidata community, and to encourage existing members to continue their active participation, enhancing the community process. For 2012, a total of $100,000 is available for awards; proposals for amounts up to $20,000 will be considered.