Planned product improvements for the NOAA Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS)

The NOAA Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) is a

NOAA Research system, developed at the Earth System Research

Laboratory (ESRL), that serves the meteorological community by

supporting observation collection integration, quality control, and

distribution of thousands of NOAA and non-NOAA observations, including

over 60,000 surface mesonet stations from local, state, and federal

agencies, and private networks, as well as upper-air datasets

including multi-agency wind profiler and automated, commercial

aircraft observations. The mesonet database includes Road Weather

Information System observations from state Departments of

Transportation, as well as real-time observations from the Remote

Automated Weather Stations (RAWS) network, the Cooperative Mesonets in

the Western U.S. (MesoWest) network, the WeatherBug and UrbaNet

networks operated by AWS Convergence Technologies, Inc., the Citizen

Weather Observing Program (CWOP) network, and many others. MADIS

receives these observations in different formats, units, and time

stamps, and provides them in a single uniform database. Additionally,

MADIS supplies data providers with quality control and station

monitoring information to assist in their maintenance activities and

to enhance and promote the mutual benefits of public/private data

sharing. Organizations receiving MADIS data feeds include National

Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices, the NWS National Centers for

Environmental Prediction, the National Center for Atmospheric

Research, and many major universities and commercial weather

businesses.

In 2007, the NOAA Research Council and NOAA Transition Board rated

MADIS as one of NOAA's highest priority research-to-operations

transition projects. Overall plans for the transition include the

implementation of MADIS real-time capabilities at the NWS and the

transfer of existing MADIS saved datasets and future archive

responsibilities to the NESDIS National Climatic Data Center. The NWS

transition approach will consist of an integrated NWS

Telecommunications (TOC) and National Centers for Environmental

Prediction Central Operations (NCO) distributed system. Initial

Operating Capability (IOC) for the NWS MADIS system is scheduled

for 2010. ESRL will remain as the primary MADIS Research and

Development organization, and will host a research-to-operations test

environment facility within the ESRL/GSD Central Facility.

This paper will provide a status update on the existing MADIS system,

and will also cover planned product improvements and upgrades to MADIS

datasets and services, including those necessary to support 1) the

Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), 2) the National

Surface Weather Observing System (NSWOS), 3) the modernized Historic

Climate Network (HCN-M), 4) the Next Generation NOAA Profiler Network

(NGNPN), and 5) the National Mesonet. Companion papers, by D. Helms

et al., J.C. Edwards et al., and M.F. Barth et al. will provide

additional information on the MADIS transition to NOAA operations,

upgraded MADIS web services in support of NextGen, and updated

observational metadata in support of the National Mesonet.