NOAA Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) Status on Transition to Final Operating Capability

The Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS), developed by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Office of Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the National Weather Service (NWS), extends NOAA's observational networks by collecting, integrating, quality controlling (QC), and distributing observations from NOAA and non-NOAA organizations. MADIS leverages partnerships with international agencies; federal, state, and local agencies (e.g. state Departments of Transportation); universities; volunteer networks; and the private sector (e.g. airlines, railroads) to integrate observations from their stations with those of NOAA to provide a finer density, higher frequency observational database for use by the greater meteorological community. MADIS went live in July of 2001, providing a common interface for accessing 50+ observational types from Mesonet's, Maritime, METAR, SAO, Profiler, RAOD, and automated aircraft data feeds. Today MADIS offers over 400 observations types and has extended the MADIS ingest data feeds to include climate, Mobile Platform Environmental Data (MoPED), snow, Radiometer, Sodar, satellite, and metadata. MADIS plays a significant role as an observational infrastructure piece in NWS' plans for a Weather Ready Nation (WRN). MADIS enhanced observations are provided in standardized formats to the meteorological community for operations, research, and decision support.

A Letter Of Agreement (LOA) was signed between NWS and OAR in 2008 to transition MADIS from research to operations at the NWS, OAR, and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). MADIS attained Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in 2010 but failed to move forward due to funding issues, the Final Operating Capability (FOC) implementation approach, and operational responsibilities never fully supported by the participating agencies.

A new LOA was signed in 2012 by the Office of Atmospheric Research (OAR), the NWS, and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) for the transition of MADIS from IOC to FOC. The extended MADIS team of OAR, NWS, and NESDIS made changes to how MADIS would be operationally implemented to reduce operational support cost and simplify MADIS operations. MADIS operations will be centralized at NCEP; MADIS archive capabilities will be hosted at NESDIS National Climatic Data Center (NCDC); and ESRL will provide MADIS research, development, and tier III support. This implementation strategy creates a conduit that will facilitate moving observational research to operations more efficiently and cost effectively in the future.

The MADIS poster will provide an update on MADIS capabilities, an overview of the MADIS transition to NWS operations, and MADIS activities post FOC including those necessary to support the National Mesonet, Mobile Platform Environmental Data (MoPED), and Clarus.