Seasonality Pro: Visualizing Real-Time Model Data on the iPad

The rapid advancement of hardware capabilities in mobile devices has allowed apps to push the limits much further than was possible just a few years ago. While other fields have taken advantage of the full range of hardware capabilities, only a handful of weather apps have made these advances. One such app is Seasonality Pro, a new product by Gaucho Software for the iPad. Seasonality Pro gives meteorologists an advanced tool for analyzing current model data. Using the extensive data collection offered via OpenDAP servers at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), Seasonality Pro provides users with convenient access to a full suite of environmental model data. The app includes several vector-based map layers and presents an interface for plotting model output grids as map overlays. Overlays can be shown in a variety of different styles to best represent the type of data being plotted, and are drawn in vector format so the app will always display the maximum resolution offered by the models. This is a significant benefit over many web-based model displays that only offer static raster images from the model output.

During this presentation, I will demonstrate what is possible when an app like Seasonality Pro has rapid access to a large pool of remote model data from a mobile device. I will show examples of the data as well as samples of the various display styles offered. My presentation will conclude with a discussion of optimizations I implemented during the development process to better work within the limitations of current mobile devices.