Extended Abstract (576K)9B.5
Archived severe weather warnings for virtual globe applications
Chad Hutchins, STG, Inc., Asheville, NC; and S. Ansari
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) archives severe weather warnings in the Surface Record Retention System (SRRS) for all 124 National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices. These data are available in text format from NCDC's Hierarchical Data Storage System (HDSS) Access System (HAS) dating back to April 2001. Open source Geographic Information System (GIS) software is used to parse the text data into the Keyhole Markup Language (KML) format. KML is the primary input/output format for Google Earth, and is supported in other Virtual Globe applications such as NASA WorldWind and ESRI ArcGIS. The issue and expiration times for each warning are recorded in the KML file and allow animations through time. The full warning text is embedded in the file and both county and polygon based warnings are supported. The warnings are available in daily and monthly files and are updated nightly. This processing will be integrated into NCDC's Severe Weather Data Inventory, a geospatial database of severe weather data from multiple sources.
Session 9B, Virtual Globe (Continued)
Thursday, 24 January 2008, 3:30 PM-5:30 PM, 207
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