Viewing Mesonets as Dynamical Systems

As discussed in the NAS report “Observing Weather and Climate from the Ground Up”, the national capability to observe conditions near the earth's surface is energetic and often characterized as chaotic. Harnessing that energy productively and decreasing the perception of chaos requires planning that explicitly considers the value, effort, and needs of the individuals, educational institutions, agencies, and commercial firms that deploy surface-based instrumentation. While metadata limitations and lack of standards constrain some uses of the data available now, existing efforts such as MADIS and MesoWest are prototypes of approaches to effectively integrate a broad spectrum of data resources. Lessons learned from the development of MesoWest over the past decade will be reviewed.