The Unidata program and the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) have a long history of collaboration and cooperation to serve the needs of Unidata community members. Now, the SSEC Data Center, which provides access to and distribution of real-time and archive weather satellite data, is beginning a new program to make limited amounts of archive satellite data available to Unidata's academic community members at no cost.

High-resolution MODIS image of Hawaiian islands

The University of Hawaii has installed a new X/L band antenna and satellite downlink that follows satellites that are part of the Polar Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) system. The university installation is intended to capture real time data useful for weather and ocean forecasts as the satellites pass over Hawaii. The project is a collaboration between UH Manoa, the National Weather Service (NWS) Honolulu Forecast Office (HFO), NWS Pacific Region Headquarters, the University of Wisconsin, and Honolulu Community College, where the antenna is installed.

On August 21, 2012, NCEP will be upgrading the Short-Range Ensemble Forecast System (SREF). SREF output is delivered to Unidata community members via the CONDUIT data stream.

Abstracts are due 1 August 2012.

The American Meteorological Society's Board on Data Stewardship will be organizing sessions on topics related to Data Stewardship at the 93rd AMS Annual Meeting, which will take place 6-10 January 2013 in Austin, TX.

The American Meteorological Society's Board on Data Stewardship will be organizing sessions on topics related to Data Stewardship at the 93rd AMS Annual Meeting, which will take place 6-10 January 2013 in Austin, TX.

During late March and early April 2012 the Unidata Program Center conducted a survey of Cooperative Opportunity for NCEP Data Using IDD Technology (CONDUIT) users to determine which of the model output currently included in the feed are in use, which are candidates for removal from the feed, and which new model runs (if any) should be added to the feed.

Example RAP output

Rapid Refresh (RAP) is the next-generation hourly-updated replacement for the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) numerical model covering North America. The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), along with the Earth Systems Research Laboratory (ESRL) have been running the RAP model experimentally for some time, and NCEP plans to switch to the RAP for operational use on Tuesday, May 1 2012. (If May 1st is a Critical Weather Day, the transition will take place as soon as practical afterward).

Unidata developer John Caron spends a big portion of his time thinking about how to make the formats in which scientific data are stored more useful and robust. If you're a user of the GRIB or BUFR formats, or just have an interest in the long-term viability of data formats in general, read on.

The National Centers for Environmental Prediction have begun providing Fire Weather output from selected areas of the North American Mesoscale (NAM) model via Unidata's CONDUIT feed. The additional data were added into the CONDUIT feed on September 20, 2011.

WSI Corporation and Unidata are pleased to announce the availability of global lightning data to members of the Unidata community.

WSI Corp.'s Global Lightning Network (GLN) provides high quality real-time and archive lightning stroke data to clients throughout the world. Lightning sensors are located at more than 150 international hosting partner sites, in addition to the detectors that make up the North American Precision Lightning Network (all NAPLN data is included in the GLN data feed). In the key deployment areas, including North and South America, Europe, and Asia/Australia, GLN detection efficiency values are as high as 90-95%, with corresponding location accuracies less than 1 km. Real-time data are collected in a 1-minute bin, and contain cloud-to-ground lightning stroke data and some cloud flash discharges.