Quasi-Operational Functionality in MADIS

The Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) has been owned and operated by the National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Central Operations (NCO) as part of the NWS’ Office of Dissemination’s Integrated Dissemination Program (IDP) since January 21, 2015. MADIS was jointly developed by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Office of Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the National Weather Service (NWS). MADIS was designed to extend NOAA’s observational assets by leveraging partnerships with non-NOAA entities such as international agencies; federal, state, and local agencies (e.g. state Departments of Transportation); universities; volunteer networks; and the private sector (e.g. airlines, railroads).

MADIS has been a crucial data delivery system for the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Weather Forecast Offices (WFO) for many years. On a daily basis, NWS forecasters and many other users utilize MADIS data to refine and improve information to protect life and property. MADIS is an essential capability allowing NOAA to collect and identify high quality observations which form the foundation of NOAA’s Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) digital analysis and verification processes. Operational access to these data is essential in enhancing forecaster situational awareness, thereby extending warning lead-times and for aiding in the establishment of a `Warn-on-Forecast` capability within the NWS. MADIS’ centralized data acquisition reduces the cost of operations for NWS WFOs, which would otherwise be required to individually, and often redundantly, collect observations locally. By assimilating private sector as well as government purchased observations, MADIS saves NOAA the costs of new observing systems and the cost of maintenance. MADIS enhances Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) by improving the quality, quantity, and temporal frequency of observations available to NWS global and regional data assimilation and modeling systems. MADIS data is also used outside of the NWS. The FAA requires MADIS data in order to fulfill its Next Generation Services requirements. MADIS data is used by other government agencies such as the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Transportation (DOT), other research organizations, the private sector, and the general public.

MADIS is classified as an NWS supplemental data source that is essential for enhancing situational awareness. MADIS is used by operational decision makers in and outside of NOAA by providing a higher resolution, temporal and spatial, quality-controlled observation database then is available just using NOAA data. It does this at a fraction of the cost that NOAA would incur if the sites where owned and operated by MADIS. MADIS provides the observations in a variety of formats to aid users in adapting the information for their operational needs. MADIS is updated annually and include observations from newly added providers. The updates to MADIS are to slow to meet NOAA operational needs and users continue to surf the web in an effort to enhance their understanding of severe storm events to help with warning the public. To help mitigate this problem MADIS is working on methods for adding new providers to operations in weeks instead of years. MADIS is also continuing to add improvements to delivering information to users. This talk will cover how the team is addressing these problems and how users can get access to MADIS pre-operational release to help improve MADIS.