Building SuomiNet on Unidata's Internet Data Distribution (IDD) System

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is engaged with the university community and the Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) to create a large network of GPS receivers (SuomiNet) and to utilize the resulting data for estimating water vapor in the atmosphere and total electron content (TEC) in the ionosphere. We will discuss how the data flows for this network--encompassing data collection, data dissemination, and instrument control.

The LDM (Local Data Manager) is widely used at universities for real-time data flows, serving as the linchpin for Unidata's IDD (Internet Data Distribution) system. This distributed system now conveys a wide range of weather related products, including surface and upper-air observations, satellite imagery, radar data, NCEP model output, and other types of data to more than 150 departments, nationwide. However, SuomiNet will represent the first use of LDMs to manage data collection on a large scale. SuomiNet will comprise approximately 100 GPS receivers worldwide, each generating data that will be processed immediately at the University NAVSTAR Consortium (UNAVCO, also at UCAR) and simultaneously at the Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL).

Processed results (namely, gridded estimates of total-column water vapor, TEC, and perhaps other products) will be incorporated into the IDD's present mix of meteorologic, oceanographic, and hydrologic data sets. Hence these estimates, or the underlying raw data, may be acquired--at no cost--by users anywhere on the Internet. These users, forecasters and researchers, may use this data (in combination with other data) to initialize models or generate a rich set of additional products.