the noaa weather and climate toolkit

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The NOAA Weather and Climate Toolkit

Steve Ansari, Stephen Del Greco (NOAA / NCDC)Mark Phillips (UNC-Asheville / NEMAC)

Bill Hankins (STG Inc.)

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Overview

• Free, public domain source code• Desktop and command-line application• Simple visualization and data export• Platform independent (Java-based)• Leverages community tools and standards

(NetCDF for Java, Common Data Model, etc…)

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Data• Raw data files on disk or remote location

(URL, THREDDS, OPeNDAP, etc…)

• NetCDF, GRIB, GINI, HDF and more via Unidata Common Data Model (CDM):– Feature types of Grid, Swath, Radial (Time

Series, Point, coming soon)

• Supports:– NEXRAD, GOES, Model Data, and much

more.

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Visualization

• Simple 2-D maps

• Basic overlays included (states, counties, etc…)

• Background images from any OGC WMS– Shaded Relief, Topo Maps, Landsat, ext…

• Save images and animations to Animated GIF, AVI, KMZ (Google Earth)

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Visualization

GOES Infrared Water Vapor with Blue Marble Web Map Service (WMS) background map

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Visualization

Smoothed NEXRAD Reflectivity Data

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Visualization

U.S. Drought Monitor service from NIDIS/NDMC (National Drought Mitigation Center)

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Visualization

Sea Surface Temperature (NetCDF data over OPeNDAP)

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Visualization

Sea Surface Temperature Animation(NetCDF data over OPeNDAP)

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Visualization

• New Feature:– Internal Google Earth Instance

(Currently Windows Only)

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Visualization

Hurricane Andrew: NCDC GridSat Climate Data Record (CDR).

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Data Export• “Bridge” between raw Weather and

Climate data and multiple scientific user communities

• Export Data to:Shapefile, Well-Known Text, Arc/Info ASCII

GRID, Gridded and Raw NetCDF, GeoTIFF and KMZ (Google Earth)

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Applications

Level-II NEXRAD Reflectivity data from Hurricane Charley in ESRI ArcScene.

Data exported to a point Shapefile with an exaggerated height attribute.

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Applications

GOES Satellite Imagery from Hurricane Rita landfall, exported as ASCII GRID, in ArcGIS

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Applications

GOES Satellite Imagery from Hurricane Rita landfall in Google Earth

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Applications

• New Features:– 3D Radar Sweeps in Google Earth

• Drapes rendered image on COLLADA model(Similar to 3D building models)

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Applications

Hurricane Charley: 3D Radar Reflectivity in Google Earth

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Applications

Hurricane Katrina: 3D Radar Reflectivity in Google Earth

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Applications

Hurricane Katrina: 3D Radar Reflectivity in Google Earth(Movie – click to start…)

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Applications

Command-line batch processing of data export

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Applications

Public domain / open source API

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Contact

Thank you! Questions?

WCT Website: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/wct

Contact:Steve.Ansari@noaa.gov

(828) 271-4611

151 Patton Ave.

Asheville, NC 28801

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