2011 - Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences ...

Several climate-monitoring products created by the Physical Sciences Division.
PSD-07 Experimental Climate Data
and Web Services
FEDERAL LEADS: NICK WILDE AND RANDALL DOLE
CIRES LEADS: PRASHANT SARDESHMUKH
AND CATHERINE SMITH
NOAA Goal 2: Climate
Project Goal: Improve public access to climate information
and forecast products to facilitate research, to inform public
planning and policy decisions, and to assist any interested
parties impacted by climate.
Milestone 1. Improve PSD’s visualization and analysis of
climate data to support experimental monitoring and explanation
of current and evolving climate conditions, and
to advance understanding of the climate system through
imaging and animation.
The Physical Sciences Division (PSD) has created a
number of products that make it easier to monitor the
current climate and the processes that affect the climate.
One research topic was looking at the factors affecting
hurricane formation and maintenance. Web pages were
developed to monitor the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season,
presenting current and historic wind shear and sea surface
temperature (SST) plots. An analysis of the 2010 Rus-
122 CIRES Annual Report 2011
sian Heat Wave was presented on the climate attribution
(CSI) page, incorporating an interactive map and plots of
climate model simulations.
The PSD maproom website, which is an ongoing collection
of climate/weather monitoring plots, has been
revamped with a new look and better graphics. Interactive,
animated visualizations are displayed continuously
in the Climate/Weather Visualization Lab (see photo) for
real-time monitoring of climate conditions.
Web applications for plotting maps and time series have
been developed for the 20th Century Reanalysis to allow
comparison of past and present climate. PSD has also
generated Science-on-a-Sphere animations of this data set.
Experimental web pages include an updated tropical SST
forecast page and a page forecasting outgoing long-wave
radiation (OLR) for tropical weather prediction. Significant
updates to our climate monitoring data sets this past year
include the 20th Century V2 Reanalysis, the NOAA merged
SST and the NOAA high-resolution SST and ice data set.
Product: Dole, R, M Hoerling, J Perlwitz, J Eischeid,
P Pegion, T Zhang, X Quan, T Xu, and D Murray
(2010), Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010
Russian Heat Wave?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L06702,
doi:10.1029/2010GL046582.