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This project is a cooperative effort between NCAR's Data Support Section (DSS) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) of NOAA. NCEP is responsible for the numerical analyses of the data, while the DSS is responsible for the majority of input data collection and preparation and output data archiving and distribution. This project is a good example of interagency cooperation to achieve a mutually beneficial scientific goal.
The project goal is to reanalyze the previous 50 years of atmospheric data, and this was completed on July 23, 1998. The dataset provides output each six hours. The analyses are done at a resolution of T62 (208 Km) and 28 levels in the vertical. The project started in 1991, based on many earlier years of data gathering, model development, and related experience. The task of NCAR (DSS section) is to provide the observations and handle the output. There are millions of surface and upper air observations (from balloons, aircraft, and satellite temperature and cloud wind data) that are used. This work and its extensions is also helping other reanalysis projects around the world.
Although the project goal has now been reached, plans for further improvements are under way. Plans for 1998-2000 include helping a new reanalysis by NCEP to do 1948-2000 (about 54 years), that will start in 2001. NCAR will find some of the missing observations and carry out 20 steps to enhance the archives.
The top panel shows El Niño conditions at the ocean surface, and the bottom panel shows La Niña conditions. (Red indicates warmer water and blue cooler.) The Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) and satellite data were combined to create these global views, courtesy of the Coupled Model Project at the National Meteorological Center.
The Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) has been created by combining, editing, and summarizing global in situ marine data from many different sources. Merchant ship observations back to 1854 have been supplemented in more recent years by automated measurements, e.g., from drifting and moored buoys.
This project with other labs started in 1981. It expands and updates the world's best surface ocean dataset. It is used for reanalysis. It has temperature, pressure, wind, clouds, etc. It provides much of what the world knows about ocean surface temperature changes during the past 144 years.
COADS is the result of a continuing cooperative project between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) -- specifically its Environmental Research Laboratories (ERL), National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES, conducted jointly with the University of Colorado) -- and the National Science Foundation's National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The ability to explore and understand complex simulated and observed worlds will be of great importance not just to atmospheric science, but to all science. It will be vital to the researcher and formative to school children learning about physics or chemistry. Scientists will explore their world in ways they never could before; children will learn in ways we didn't imagine just a few years ago.
Our simulations and our observational datasets grow larger and more complex by the day. And, as our computational capabilities continue to track the exponential curve, it may soon be the case that the primary limiting factor for research is not the technology, but the human. One must be able to digest the data, ask questions of it. There are many questions we can ask of these complex simulations -- many questions that in the past made no sense to ask or had no answer that could be easily conveyed. The Visualization Lab is aimed at helping to usher in this new era of visual interaction -- at providing the ability to freely explore vast dataspaces -- and produce materials that can communicate the results of such efforts to peers and public.
This image (click for larger version) is composed of three isosurfaces and two 2D slices. The white isosurface represents a 0.5 g/kg ice water isovalue, the yellow isosurface represents a 0.5 g/kg liquid water isovalue, and the red isosurface represents a 0.5 g/kg rain water isovalue. The vertical slice at the rear of the model domain shows the east-west wind component (U), and the horizontal colored slice at the bottom of the domain shows contours of rain water at the surface. A Cloud Resolving Model was run using data from a unique 3D experiment performed during September 1-7, 1974, during Phase III of the Global Atmospheric Research Programme Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE). The visualization was generated using an NCAR stereo-enhanced version of Vis5D.
At present, we have well-developed capabilities and experience across the breadth of NCAR science. Extant visualization work encompasses climate, chemistry, ocean, mesoscale systems, forest fires, geophysical and astrophysical turbulence, clear air turbulence, tropical storms, and more. We have developed both interactive and production visualization environments that allow us to create and record both mono and stereo 3D visualizations of very large, very complex multivariate datasets. Our capability in this area is very effective, and during the upcoming year we will continue to grow it and produce meaningful, compelling visualizations from complex datasets in all of the aforementioned areas. Highlights of our work in FY1998 include: