IBM demonstrates regional weather forecasting system at the
1997 American Meteorological Society conference
The capabilities developed and utilized for the Olympics have since been
employed in other operational forecasting settings. For example, at the
annual meeting of the American Meteorological
Society (AMS) (February 2-8,
1997 in Long Beach, CA), this capability was replicated in the IBM booth
as part of the conference's technical exhibition. The system was adapted
to the Los Angeles area.
New 24-hour mesoscale forecasts were produced every three hours at 10
km resolution in a region roughly 600x600 km in extent during the conference.
The execution was on a small (eight-node) SP in a manner similar to what
was used at the Olympics. In this case, raw observations were received
regularly over the internet in the NOAA/FSL booth at the conference, where
the LAPS pre-processor step was executed. The LAPS results were then networked
to the SP for ingest into RAMS. Output from RAMS every 10 minutes of forecast
time were provided for visualization. Animations were produced routinely
as the primary mechanism to evaluate the model output through the procedures
proven at the Olympics. The system also permitted simple tracking of the
simulation, so that the interactive tools could be utilized while the model
was running. If there were problems in the model run, then the execution
could be terminated and the model restarted with new input observations.
This operational numerical forecasting coupled with routine, interactive
three-dimensional visualization was unprecedented at such a conference
setting.
The following image is a frame from one of the animations
produced during the conference.
It shows a terrain map, pseudo-colored by temperature overlaid with
coastline, county and river maps. Predicted winds are illustrated by streamlines
with directional arrows, colored by speed. Topographic effects are seen
on both the surface winds and on clouds, which are visualized as a white,
translucent isosurface of cloud water density.
IBM, NOAA/NWS and NOAA/FSL personnel participated in a special Olympics
weather forecasting session, which consisted of a series of invited papers.
These presentations were well received. Short (4 pages) pre-prints were
published in the conference proceedings, which had an image from the visualization
system that supported the Olympics on the cover (i.e., as shown to the
lower right).
A paper that summarizes the visualization work
for this project and the results is available for you to read.
It was presented at the American Meteorological
Society (AMS) Conference, February 2-7, 1997 in Long Beach, CA.
Alternatively, you can download a PDF copy
of this paper, L. Treinish and L. Rothfusz, Three-Dimensional Visualization
for Support of Operational Forecasting at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games.
A paper that summarizes
the IBM SP server for this project and the results is available for you
to read. It was presented at the American
Meteorological Society (AMS) Conference, February 2-7, 1997 in Long
Beach, CA.
Alternatively, you can download a PDF
copy of this paper, Z. Christidis, J. Edwards and J. Snook, Regional
Weather Forecasting in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games Using an IBM SP.
You may also download additional papers related to this project that
will be presented at the AMS conference:
lloydt@watson.ibm.com
