1

The NOAA Weather and Climate Toolkit

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

Bill Hankins (STG Inc.)

2

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…)

3

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.

4

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)

5

Visualization

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

6

Visualization

Smoothed NEXRAD Reflectivity Data

7

Visualization

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

8

Visualization

Sea Surface Temperature (NetCDF data over OPeNDAP)

9

Visualization

Sea Surface Temperature Animation(NetCDF data over OPeNDAP)

10

Visualization

• New Feature:– Internal Google Earth Instance

(Currently Windows Only)

11

Visualization

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

12

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)

13

Applications

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

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

14

Applications

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

15

Applications

GOES Satellite Imagery from Hurricane Rita landfall in Google Earth

16

Applications

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

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

17

Applications

Hurricane Charley: 3D Radar Reflectivity in Google Earth

18

Applications

Hurricane Katrina: 3D Radar Reflectivity in Google Earth

19

Applications

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

20

Applications

Command-line batch processing of data export

21

Applications

Public domain / open source API

22

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

23