iowa environmental mesonet iowa environmental mesonet past, present, & future dr dennis todey...

Iowa Environmental Mesonet http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu

Iowa Environmental MesonetIowa Environmental MesonetPast, Present, & FuturePast, Present, & Future

Dr Dennis TodeyDaryl Herzmann

Department of AgronomyIowa State University


Seminar Outline

● IEM Past– Background information– Building the IEM

● IEM Present– Current impacts in the state and the nation– Status of project areas

● IEM Future– Potential partnerships– Augmenting networks


THE PAST!!!


ASOS Network

● Larger Airports● 15 sites● Flagship network● 1+ obs per hour


AWOS Network

● 37 Sites● 4 of them just recently

added VTI,MPZ,PEA,IIB

● FOD and CWI are really ASOSish

● 3 obs per hour


NWS COOP

● ~160 sites in Iowa.● Report 1x or 2x per

day● 'Official' observations

of climate


DCP / USGS

● > 150 stations● Mostly river gauges,

some have atmos● Report every 15-60

minutes, but delayed.


ISU Ag Climate Network

● 12 sites located at ISU Exp farms

● Report hourly, but delayed by one day

● Additional soil sensors will be added soon.


DOT RWIS

● 50 (48) sites located along roadways

● 4 obs per hour● Pavement and bridge

deck sensors


Soil Climate Analysis Network

● 2 sites in Iowa● Shagbark Hills was

recently added.● 1 ob per hour● 5 soil levels● (High-end ISUAG

stations)


KCCI SchoolNet

● Currently, 44 sites.● ~400 obs per hour● Instantaneous winds● Very cool

applications.


KELO SchoolNet

● Currently, 14 sites● Recently added on 12

Sept 2002● ~400 obs per hour● 5 sites without

humidity sensors


Add them all up...

REALTIME DATA HISTORICAL ARCHIVEStationsObs/Station Obs / Day Obs/Station Obs / Day

ASOS 15 24 360 24 360AWOS 37 72 2,664 1440 53,280DCP 150 75 11,250 75 11,250RWIS 50 72 3,600 96 4,800ISU AG 12 24 288 24 288SCAN 2 24 48 24 48COOP 100 1 100 1 100SchoolNet 45 72 3,240 1440 64,800

411 21,550 134,926

23 Sept 2002 Total: 19761


Recent Conferences

● NCAR: 'GIS in Weather, Climate and Impacts'– 12-14 August 2002 -- Boulder, Colorado– Presented on the IEM's GIS efforts and sat on a

discussion panel.

● Barons RADAR Training Conference– 23-25 August 2002 -- Huntsville, Alabama– Presented on IEM work with KCCI's SchoolNet.– Overwelming response.


THE PRESENT!!!


IEM & GIS

● Firstly, what is GIS?– 'Geographic Information Systems'

● What is it though?– GIS is not ESRI, but ESRI is a GIS.– My definition, 'Intelligent Spatial System'

● While most people can't agree on a definition, they can look at a system and deem it as a GIS.


IEM GIS Efforts

● Web Applications– Built on MapServer– Backend data accessed via PostGIS database

● GIS Datasets– Current school network conditions– NEXRAD imagery shapefiles, geo-referenced images– NWS COOP Climate data


Ex 1. Where's it raining?

● Current NEXRAD base reflectivity

● 15 minute schoolNet precip totals shown

● GIS Layers– Counties / States– NEXRAD image– SchoolSites (Spatial

DB)


Ex 2: Spatial Precip Viewer

● Qualitative comparison of NEXRAD precip and observations.

● Incorperates many GIS layers.

● Provides links at the bottom to GIS datasets.


3-4 June 2002: Heavy Rainfall


Ex 3: NEXRAD imagery with warnings

● Real-time ingestion of warnings into Spatial DB.

● Plots both county based and polygon based warnings.

● Zoomable and Queriable.


Ex 4: Iowa Tornado Database

● Historical tornado reports are mined in the database.

● The dataset is querible and visualized with the help of GIS!


Ex 5: Pretty Plots

● With the help of PHP Mapscript, plots such as this one are a breeze!

● This plot was dynamicallly generated based on stations of the users choice.


IEM Laundry List

(Things that give me headaches and make me lose sleep at night.)


Averaging the schoolNet winds

Wind data sampled every minute

Wind data averagedevery minute.(roughly 10 obs)


AWOS Precipitation

Time Counter08:45:00 1.0108:46:00 1.0208:47:00 1.0308:48:00 1.1008:49:00 1.1208:50:00 1.1208:51:00 1.1508:52:00 1.1608:53:00 1.1708:54:00 1.1708:55:00 1.1708:56:00 0.0108:57:00 0.01

The observation at :45 after is sent inthe METAR report. The actual total at:55 after is never reported.

The result is that precip data from 10 minutes out of every hour is not reported. This is roughly a 17%under-estimation.

Clarinda's (ICL) precip counter resetsat :45 after, so METAR precip from the site is not missing data.


AWOS Precip ComparisonM ay 2002 Iowa AWOS Precip Report1 Minute Data Archive 20 Minute CLH Feed

station Total Hours Missing Total Hours Missing DifferenceADU 3.66 2 2.73 28 -0.93AIO 3.91 2 3.1 33 -0.81AWG 5.85 10 4.59 40 -1.26AXA 2.06 0 1.6 29 -0.46BNW 4.02 38 2.88 66 -1.14CAV 2.29 3 2.08 29 -0.21CBF 2.88 1 2.19 38 -0.69CCY 3.08 0 2.21 29 -0.87CIN 3.61 3 2.76 39 -0.85CNC 4.53 3 3.6 41 -0.93CSQ 3.89 4 3.23 30 -0.66DEH 2.14 149 1.21 167 -0.93DNS 2.77 0 2.06 33 -0.71EBS 3.27 21 2.88 45 -0.39EOK 0.53 76 0.51 103 -0.02FFL 7.18 1 5.98 27 -1.2FSW 6.4 0 4.99 34 -1.41HNR 4.88 22 3.69 47 -1.19ICL 0.63 83 0.65 115 0.02IKV 2.95 0 2.44 27 -0.51LRJ 2.75 1 1.91 28 -0.84


Missing AWOS Data

● Around midnight, the DOT's mainframe goes offline for backups.

● So does the AWOS data feed.

● This data is never recovered in the METAR feed.


NWS Coding standards

● 'More than 50% of NWS severe weather Watch, Warning, and Adisory products contain coding or formatting errors' - A. Marvin McInnis

● Some ASOS Daily Summary Messages (DSM) are not given a correct WMO header, thus the products are dropped at the NWS Gateway.

● NWS COOP reporting is done on a per-WFO basis. The reported SHEF data is sent with much different meanings.


COOP RTP Data Reports

● Des Moines, LaCrosse– DH07/TX/TN/PP

● Sioux Falls– RTP product is not SHEF encoded. RR1-3 come in

with meaningful timestamps

● Davenport– DH07/TAIRZX/TAIRZN/PPDRZZ/SFDRZZ/SDIRZZ

● Omaha– DH07/TAIRZX/TAIRZN/PPD/SF/SD


IEM Tracker

● Built on Portfolio.● Tracks meta-data about IEM sites.● Tracks trouble tickets for site repairs and offline

status alerts.● Integrated with the mesonet via the database.


IEM Tracker / Offline Status


Example IEM Tracker Alert

Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 07:21:12 -0500From: Iowa Environ Mesonet <[email protected]>To: [email protected]: [IEM] Council Bluffs (I-80) Online

############################################# Iowa Environmental Mesonet ## - RWIS Network Station Status ############################################# Council Bluffs (I-80) is back Online! Great! Last Observation was received at: 2002-09-16 12:07:04.00 GMT Trouble Ticket ID: 1255 has been cleared.


IEM Tracker Impacts

● In 3 months, IEM Tracker has generated ~1200 trouble tickets!!!

● ~2,400 emails sent to network admins and site contacts.

● ~2,800 pieces of meta-data entered into the database.

● Provides excellent proof of site problems.● Observing network reliability has increased for

every network using IEM Tracker.


Visual Look at IEM Tracker


Interactive Plotting Fun.

● The IEM utilizes a dynamic PHP plotting package called JpGraph to generate most of its interactive plots.


THE FUTURE!!!


WAP IEM

● Building mechanisms to place IEM data on cell-phones, PDAs, GPS units.

● Focus of providing just-in-time data for decision support.


Future/Continuing Efforts

● IEM-DataVision– All in one, data viewing/dl/comparing application

● QUALITY CONTROL– Visually on plots and flags in datasets

● Web-site streamlining● IEM-Freeze

– Multi-sensor, GIS based, freezing rain identification

● GIS, GIS, GIS


Future Conferences.

● 21-24 October 2002– National Weather Association Conference– Will receive the 'Larry R Johnson' award for

significant contributions to operational Meteorology.

● 9-13 February 2003– American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting– Will present at the first GIS focused session of the

IIPS conference


Questions?

Daryl Herzmann

[email protected]

3015 Agronomy Hall

515.294.5978

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