NOAA's Weather and Climate Toolkit

The Weather and Climate Toolkit (WCT) is free, platform independent software distributed from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). The WCT provides visualization and data export capabilities for weather and climate data, including radar, satellite, and model data. Multiple data formats are supported, and WCT provides tools for custom data overlays, Web Map Service (WMS) background maps, animations, and basic filtering. The WCT Data Export Wizard allows for data export in both vector polygon/point and raster formats, which promotes the interoperability of weather and climate information across many sectors and user communities. For example, support for Google Earth enables seamless visualization of data on a native 3-D Google Earth instance linked to the standard 2-D map. Recent usage of WCT included the display of the debris field imbedded in the Joplin Missouri 2011 tornado. The WCT is built upon scalable, open source and community-driven software which allows for flexible future development. Through the visualization and export capabilities, users are able to easily integrate the results into their own applications. By distributing this as free and platform independent, the WCT reaches a large audience of diverse users in the private, research, educational, and government sectors. The direct benefits to many user communities exemplify the overall NOAA mission.