15th Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences
12th Conference on Applied Climatology

JP1.19

A Java-based web plotting and analysis package for the NC AgNet

Dhaval Thakkar, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC; and D. S. Niyogi, S. Raman, and V. K. Parameshwara

NC AgNet is a network of micrometeorological towers across the state of North Carolina. Each tower measures different weather parameters such as humidity, precipitation, air and soil temperature, radiation, soil moisture, and winds. This information is sent continuously at hourly via a communication link to the State Climate Office in North Carolina State University at Raleigh.

We can provide additional value to this information by making it easily and quickly comprehensible to the end-user. This is achieved by graphical representation of data. Different weather parameters from the selected station (tower) are plotted against the time duration. The plots give user a quick glance at the weather parameter variation in the selected region.Users can select any time duration in the last three months and observe the variation of parameters. Besides plotting, additional features help user to customize the information. Plots can be observed with measurement parameters (e.g. mph or km/h), or one can select the slope and constant of the plot. The zoom feature helps to magnify area of interest in plot. The information from data logger is in the form of raw ASCII data file for each station. Plots are realized using Applets developed in the JAVA language. The Applet reads information from the data file for the duration entered by user and plots a graph. As the project is in its initial phase, data history is varying over the period of time. To plot weather parameters over a long duration say for 2 years, we need to maintain complete history of all parameters and for all stations. We resolve this by dividing plots into two modules. In the first module, user can select any interval in the last three months to view the plots. The second module needs data file and user defines information as an input for explicitly plotting the data. The graph applet is developed in JAVA language using Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) Application Program Interface (API). The web browsers which support AWT are Netscape 4.06 and onwards. End users having web browsers of lesser version will not be able to view the plots. A link is provided on the plot web page for downloading a patch to upgrade.

Joint Poster Session 1, Joint Poster Viewing with Buffet (Joint between 15th Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences and 12th Conference on Applied Climatology)
Wednesday, 10 May 2000, 5:30 PM-7:00 PM

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