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Researchers are producing an ever greater number of web-based climate data and analysis tools in support of natural resource research and management. Yet the apparent absence or underreporting of evaluation in the development of these applications has raised questions as to whether, by whom, and for what they are utilized, and, relatedly, whether they meet the rationale for their development. This paper joins recent efforts to address these questions by introducing one approach to evaluation—developmental evaluation—and reporting on its use in the evaluation of the Southwest Climate and Environmental Information Collaborative (SCENIC). A web interface under development at the Western Regional Climate Center, SCENIC provides access to climate data and analysis tools to environmental scientists in support of natural resource research and management in the southwestern United States. Evaluation findings highlight subtlety in the improvements necessary for ensuring a useful and usable application that could not have been ascertained in the absence of end-user feedback. We therefore urge researchers to systematically evaluate web-based climate data and analysis tools in the interest of ensuring their usefulness, usability, and fulfillment of the proposed rationale. In so doing, we recommend that researchers test and apply established evaluation frameworks, thereby engaging end users directly in the process of application development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the repackaging and consistent distribution of the world's major atmospheric and oceanic reanalyses. It also presents examples of the usefulness of examining multiple reanalyses. This service will make it much easier for anybody using reanalysis to access multiple datasets using an approach similar to that of phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Experienced users as well as students will find the standardized formatted data convenient to use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edward Kidson, Director of the Meteorological Service of New Zealand from 1927 until his death in 1939, was an instrumental figure in modernizing Australasian meteorology. Throughout the 1920s, Kidson promoted the methods of synoptic analysis emanating from the Bergen School of Meteorology. However, it was not until the 1930s that he began in earnest to apply these methods to weather charts for the Australasian region. This development was aided by two visits he made to Bergen and by a personal correspondence he maintained with Jacob Bjerknes during the 1930s. In 1932, Kidson presented the first Norwegian-style analysis conducted for a Southern Hemisphere region, promptly following this with a more extensive study. However, these analyses were not of a sufficient standard at that stage to be adopted in forecasting practice. It was the fortuitous visit to New Zealand of Norwegian meteorologist Jørgen Holmboe, in 1934, that finally facilitated the transition. Holmboe was attached to the Lincoln Ellsworth Antarctic Expedition, but damage to their aircraft caused them to spend the winter of 1934 in New Zealand. Holmboe was engaged at the Meteorological Service in Wellington during this period, working with Kidson to apply Norwegian methods to the region. Kidson had hoped to further embed this practice by employing Tor Bergeron in New Zealand during 1938. Bergeron had accepted an offer from Kidson but canceled at the last minute after contracting rheumatic fever. Nevertheless, shortly after Holmboe’s visit, daily analyses were being conducted along Norwegian lines, bringing Australasian meteorology into the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hyperspectral Data Viewer for Development of Research Applications, version 2 (HYDRA2), is a freeware-based multispectral analysis toolkit for satellite data that assists scientists in research and development, as well as education and training of remote sensing applications. HYDRA2 users can explore and visualize relationships between sensor measurements (brightness temperatures for infrared and reflectances for visible/near-infrared wavelengths) using spectral diagrams, cross sections, scatterplots, multiband combinations, and color enhancements on a pixel-y-pixel basis. HYDRA2 can be used with direct broadcast and archived data from sensors on board the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Suomi- National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (Suomi-NPP), NASA Aqua/ Terra, European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Meteorological Operational (MetOp), and Chinese Fengyun-3 platforms. This paper describes HYDRA2 and presents some examples using data retrievals from the Suomi-NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), Cross-Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), and Terra/Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's view on forecasting surface weather variables for weather predictions which was presented in the study of Thomas M. Hamill, Jeffrey S. Whitaker and Steven L. Mullen in the 2006 issue. The author says that a series of tests and long sample of low-resolution reforecasts is appropriate for short- range predictions however, the model of reforecasting might not be accurate enough. He mentions the two reanalysis datasets presented in the study but he notes that this statistical system is not a resolution to predict local variations of rainfall. The author suggests that in making detailed statistical forecasts, it should be based from analysis of the data gathered rather than rely on actual observations.

As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of NASA's Apollo missions, images of Earth simulated with the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) are visually compared with pictures collected during space missions of the past five decades, in particular from the Apollo missions (1968-72). The numerical weather reforecasts use the latest version of the IFS and are initialized from (re)analysis data, which provide our current best representation of the atmospheric state for any given date back to the 1950s. Visible images of our planet are produced from the IFS with a simple simulator whose main inputs are the solar fluxes at the top of the atmosphere. First, a comparison to recent imagery from deep space illustrates the high level of performance of the IFS on recent dates. Then, the validation of the IFS against photographs taken by Apollo 11 and 17 both in-flight and from the lunar surface exhibits a significant level of agreement, despite the absence or very limited number of satellite observations available. This short study confirms that the combination of high-quality initial conditions with a modern numerical weather prediction model can yield reasonably accurate reforecasts of global meteorological conditions, especially cloud systems, for dates as far back as the late 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Big Data Partnership (BDP) was established in April 2015 through cooperative research agreements between NOAA and selected commercial and academic partners. The BDP is investigating how the value inherent in NOAA's data may be leveraged to broaden their utilization through modern cloud infrastructures and advanced "big data" techniques. NOAA's Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) data were identified as an ideal candidate for such collaborative efforts. NEXRAD Level II data are valuable yet challenging to utilize in their entirety, and recent advances in weather radar science can be applied to both the archived and real-time data streams. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) transferred the complete NEXRAD Level II historical archive, originating in 1991, through North Carolina State University's Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS-NC) to interested BDP collaborators. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has received and made freely available the complete archived Level II data through its AWS platform. AWS then partnered with Unidata/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to establish a real-time NEXRAD feed, thereby providing on-demand dissemination of both archived and current data seamlessly through the same access mechanism by October 2015. To organize, verify, and utilize the NEXRAD data on its platform, AWS further partnered with the Climate Corporation. This collective effort among federal government, private industry, and academia has already realized a number of new and novel applications that employ NOAA's NEXRAD data, at no net cost to the U.S. taxpayer. The volume of accessed NEXRAD data, including this new AWS platform service, has increased by 130%, while the amount of data delivered by NOAA/NCEI has decreased by 50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses presentations discussed at the Fifth Workshop of the International Precipitation Working Group (IPWG) held on October 11-15, 2010 at Hamburg, Germany concerning global precipitation data. Topics discussed include the development of algorithms to analyze data from infrared and passive microwave satellite sensors, new satellite systems, and climate data record datasets. The article mentions that the IPWG serves as the Group for Earth Observations precipitation subtask leader.

The article presents a study to improve the capability of hurricane intensity and structure forecasts by radar data assimilation using the landfall data of Hurricane Isabel in the U.S. on September 18, 2003. It says that tropical cyclone (TC) track improves well over the past years, but TC intensity forecasts have been recorded for its errors. This study will prove that the use of land-based Doppler radar observations in a mesoscale numerical weather prediction (NWP) model can improve TC intensity forecasts. An overview of the landfall data of hurricane Isabel is offered, along with the conducted radar observations. Meanwhile, the study finds out that the use of radar data assimilation has a potential for improving hurricane intensity and structure forecasts.

The article offers information concerning the ensemble-based data assimilation workshop that was held in Marble Falls, Texas from April 10-12, 2006. It was attended by more than 40 participants from seven universities including the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They discussed the latest progress and emerging trends in ensemble-based data assimilation. A variety of applications from convective to global scales were presented in the event. It has been stressed that all of the research was demonstrated by individual investigators, postdoctoral scientists and graduate students. Moreover, the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) was regarded as the best-known form of assimilation, along with its variant.

The article focuses on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Center for Atmospheric Sciences (NCAS), established in 2001 under the NOAA Educational Partnership Program. Information on comprising institutions, graduation education offered, accomplishments, research programs, summer programs and expeditions conducted is presented among others. The main aim of NCAS is to advance and improve the climate, weather and air quality prediction through integrated measurements, models and data analysis. The center aims to serve as the prototype for enhancing graduate education and research programs at other minority serving institutions in the years to come.

As these few examples illustrate, HYDRA offers several tools to interrogate multispectral and hyperspectral remote-sensing data quantitatively and to explore the correlations between radiance measurements and features in the images. Continued development over the next several years is planned in order to incorporate more multispectrai and hyperspectral instrument systems into the HYDRA menu. In addition, several improvements will be added, including 1) improving the user interface; 2) adding the capability to animate sequences in time or wavenumber; 3) introducing a state-saving device (i.e., a persistence mechanism); 4) enhancing collaboration at remote sites through granule sharing; 5) enabling more high-spectral data analysis (i.e., principal component analyses); and 6) providing more interaction between scripting and the application. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has added HYDRA to its Virtual Laboratory for Satellite Training and Data Utilization to enable research with satellite data and to enhance training capabilities. The Virtual Laboratory is designed fo provide the instructors and students with a set of easy-to-use tools for creating and conducting training sessions—HYDRA is now part of this international tool kit. The HYDRA project is an ongoing development effort. Planned future developments include features that will enable remote multiple-site viewing of and interaction with the same dataset; this will enhance use in the Virtual Laboratory and collaborations at remote sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP) is an international project that was first proposed by the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) in 1997 and was formally launched in 2001. Since that time it has been adopted by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), which views it as an essential part of its strategy for developing global datasets to evaluate global climate models, and by the Integrated Global Observing Strategy Partnership (IGOS-P), which views it as the first element of its global water cycle theme. The United States has been an active partner in all phases of CEOP. In particular, the United States has taken the lead in contributing data from a number of reference sites, providing data processing, and archiving capabilities and related research activities through the GEWEX Americas Prediction Project (GAPP). Other U.S. programs and agencies are providing components including model and data assimilation output, satellite data, and other services. The U.S. science community has also been using the CEOP database in model evaluation and phenomenological studies. This article summarizes the U.S. contributions during the first phase of CEOP and outlines opportunities for readers to become involved in the data analysis phase of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstract on meteorology which includes "Data Assimilation Research Testbed: A Community Facility," "Mitigating New York City's Heat Island: Integrating Stakeholder Perspectives and Scientific Evaluation" and "Using a Publication Analysis to Explore Mission Success."