Sunday, 11 January 2004
Outreach Activities for the Naval Research Laboratory’s Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPSTM)
Hall 4AB
The Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) is the latest product in a series of mesoscale model developments at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Marine Meteorology Division. COAMPS represents a state-of-the-art analysis (including the Nowcast capability) and short-term (up to 72 hours) forecast tools applicable for any given region of the earth in both the atmosphere and ocean. COAMPS has been used to provide operational mesoscale atmospheric forecasts for the NAVY central and regional forecast centers since the winter of 1996. At the time, the distribution of COAMPS outside NRL and the NAVY forecast centers were limited to DOD agencies or Universities that had collaboration projects with NRL. To increase the COAMPS usage by a broader research community, the model source code was made available via the World Wide Web in 2001. Hundred of users have downloaded the COAMPS source code since then. This paper will describe activities at NRL to extend its education and supporting effort regarding the outside usage of COAMPS. These efforts include providing on-site COAMPS training classes, user’s workshops, and development of a new COAMPS web site. Five training classes and one workshop have been conducted since the initial release of COAMPS. One hundred thirty six users have attended the training and workshop. The COAMPS web development has been expanded to include information on COAMPS documentation, how to setup and run the COAMPS model, COAMPS verification statistics, COAMPS related publications and research projects, how to download the model source code, how to register as a COAMPS user, frequently asked questions, and where to obtain data to initialize COAMPS. The COAMPS web site has also been redesigned to increase the web security, to make the management and updates of the web pages more efficient, and to provide personalized login pages to control the distribution of different information to different user groups.
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