For the past several years, the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) has been engaged in an effort to provide improved weather information to the public by extending and modernizing all its meteorological systems. New observational systems have been introduced including a lightning detection system and several new Doppler radars. A new communication system was installed to support these new systems. Following these modernization activities, the need for a forecaster workstation system that integrates a wide variety of observational and numerical model increased. This need initiated the Project Group-NOWcasting (PG-NOW) at KMA. PG_NOW has been in collaboration with NOAA/Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) for two years to develop an AWIPS D-2D-like workstation called the Forecaster°¯s Analysis System (FAS).

FAS is the experimental version of AWIPS 5.0 operating on the Linux platform. After a 2-week training course in June 2001 provided by FSL to all of the KMA forecasters, the FAS will be used in a test mode in the KMA operations area during the Disaster Prevention Period from 15 June to 15 July. FAS will provide limited data including radar, satellite (GMS, NOAA), Automatic Weather Station (AWS) mesonetwork, surface synoptic observations, RAOB soundings, and the global model GDAPS and a regional MM5 model. Lightning data, typhoon tracking applications, ocean observations, and several numerical models operationally used at KMA will be integrated into FAS by the end of 2001. KMA and FSL software developers will also focus their efforts on decoding the Korean meteorological data sources and formats that differ from those on AWIPS. During the next 3-year development phase, nowcasting and hydrological applications will be integrated into FAS.

FAS consists of three D-2D workstation, a data server, an applications server, and a web and communications server. The applications server is a Compaq machine - the only non-Linux component of FAS. FAS receives all input data, except for numerical models, through the KMA communications system, known as the New Combined Meteorological Information System (NCOMIS). Because of its huge size, numerical model output is transmitted from the super computer directly, and all data are decoded on the data server. The FAS system is being operated without a notification server, which means that automatic data updates are not available. We are considering alternative notification methods for FAS.

The operational FAS will officially be launched in 2002, and is expected to help forecasters by providing a wide variety of meteorological data on an integrated workstation.

This paper will present an overview of the development and training activities, to date, of the FAS at KMA.