# Presentation: 910593

## The National Weather Service Goes Geospatial – Serving Weather Data on the Web

- Ken Waters
- Regional Scientist
- National Weather Service
- Pacific Region HQ
- Honolulu, Hawaii
- March 5, 2003

## Overview of the National Weather Service (NWS)

- Established 1898 as the Weather Bureau
- Now a part of the Department of Commerce and NOAA
- NWS consists of 122 forecast offices, including one in Guam and Honolulu

## NWS Mission

- Provide watches and warnings to save lives and property
- Operate state-of-the-art numerical weather models
- Maintain a vast amount of weather and hydrologic data, both real-time and historical

## NWS Warnings

- Short-term warnings
- Tornado
- Severe thunderstorm
- Flash flood
- Longer-term warnings
- Hurricane, river flooding, winter storm, wind
- Very long-term warnings:
- Climate and El Nino

## Numerical Models

- Global models, especially the Global Forecast System (GFS, ex-AVN)
- 80 km horizontal resolution out to 240 hours
- Regional Models
- Eta, Regional Spectral Model
- Variable resolutions, some down to 8 km
- Models are stored in GRIB format

## Observations

- Satellite (in conjunction with NOAA/NESDIS)
- Imagery (visual, infrared, water vapor)
- Geostationary (GOES)
- Resolution from 12 km down to 1 km
- Data refresh from 5 to 15 minutes
- Polar Orbiting satellites (POES)
- View always changing; resolution down to 0.5 km

## Observations

- Doppler Radar
- 130 radar sites (4 in Hawaii, 1 in Guam)
- Data refresh every 6 minutes
- Surface data (automated stations, buoys, tide and river gauges)
- Upper air data (2x daily balloon launches, ACARS on aircraft, atmospheric profilers, satellite soundings)
- Climate Data, including cooperative network of weather observers

## Many Disparate Data Formats

- GRIB (model data)
- netCDF (most data as stored at forecast offices)
- GINI (satellite)
- Archive II (radar)
- BUFR (soundings)
- McIDAS (satellite)
- Gempak (model and synoptic)
- METAR (surface weather observations)
- Text (products such as daily forecasts)

## Where are we going?

- Challenges
- Many data formats
- None in geospatial-friendly format such as shapefiles
- Rapidly growing data bases
- Working more with other federal agencies to share data
- Determining presence on the Web
- Making forecasts more user-oriented (pull technology rather than push)

## National Digital Forecast Database

- National gridded database (2.5 km) of forecast data
- Winds, clouds, rain/snow chance and amounts, temperature, humidity
- Operational end of 2003 for CONUS, 2004 for Alaska/Pacific
- Three forms:
- GRIB2 binary format for high-end users
- Imagery posted on the Web
- Legacy text products such as city forecasts, sampled from the grids rather than hand-edited

## National Digital Forecast Database

- Example of Max Temperature forecast grid image at 5 km resolution
- More info: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/NDFD

## ArcIMS Efforts

- Current team recommending prototype project for this summer’s hurricane season
- Will run off of a server in NWS HQ (Silver Spring MD)
- Will combine track forecast of hurricane, near-real-time rainfall grids plus typical shapefiles (roads, counties, cities, etc.)
- Targeted towards the Emergency Management community with the hopes that it can be used in decision-making regarding landfall of a hurricane

## Dynamic application to help decision-makers integrate NWS forecasts and data

## Warnings

- Incorporate polygon information from short-term warnings into shapefiles for ArcIMS

## Future Efforts

- Deploy the National Digital Forecast Database grids (GRIB2 GRID) in an IMS application
- Convert most NWS data sets into shapefile/grid format to allow a multitude of IMS applications

## Questions?

- This presentation can be found at:
- _[http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hq/wx_rug.ppt](http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hq/wx_rug.ppt)_
*Ken.waters@noaa.gov*
- http://www.prh.noaa.gov
- (808) 532-6413
- 737 Bishop St., Ste 2200
- Honolulu HI 96825