Headlines Archive 2009
23 Nov 09
ESRL's SOS Featured at COP15
Leaders and climate experts from around the world will be meeting in Copenhagen
Denmark from December 7-18 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference
(COP15) to address one of the world's greatest challenges: nations collectively
dealing with climate change. ESRL's Science On a Sphere® will
be featured throughout the two weeks.
12 Nov 09
ESRL Technology at Emergency Managers
Conference
ESRL's technical demonstration of the Geo-Targeted Altering System (GTAS) at
the Annual International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) Conference
held November 2 was received with enthusiasm.
9 Nov 09
ESRL Co-Hosts NOAA SOS®
Users Collaborative Network Workshop
The third NOAA Science On a Sphere® Users Collaborative Network
workshop will be held November 17-19. The workshop will facilitate work to
optimize utilization of SOS systems and to provide educational messages to
informal science audiences.
5 Nov 09
ESRL Engages Stakeholders for Future
Hazardous Weather Information Services
GSD hosted a workshop Oct 27-29 to improve the National Weather Service
Integrated Hazard Information Services. The workshop focused on the challenging
endeavor to transition the current hazard program from a paradigm of issuing
products to one of decision support.
19 Oct 09
Speeding Up Science Using GPUs
Researchers at GSD recently ran a large portion of the Non-hydrostatic
Icosahedral Model (NIM) on a Graphical Processing Unit. The model ran
twenty-five times faster on the GPU than the CPU. This line of research will
allow NOAA scientists to continue developing weather and climate prediction
models that use next-generation HPC systems to produce more timely and
accurate forecasts.
1 Oct 09
MADIS Reaches Milestone in its Transition
to Operations
ESRL's Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) met a major
milestone in its transition of real-time capabilities to operations when its
ingest and distribution hardware and software were installed at the National
Weather Service (NWS) Telecommunications Operations Center (TOC).
22 Sep 09
ESRL's New HPCS Now Working to Improve
Hurricane Forecasts
ESRL/GSD's latest High Performance Computing System (HPCS) has passed
acceptance criteria and entered into full production use. This system, named
nJet, supports the computational requirements of the Hurricane Forecast
Improvement Project (HFIP) whose goal is to improve the accuracy and timeliness
of hurricane forecasts.
18 Sep 09
A New Cluster Data System for GSD's
Central Facility
A new six-host computing cluster, dubbed the Data Systems Group (DSG) Cluster
(DC), was recently commissioned in GSD's Central Facility. The DC establishes
a reliable, capable, and highly scalable architecture for meeting substantial
and ever-growing data ingest and processing requirements at GSD.
13 Aug 09
OAR/NESDIS Collaborations on Water in the
Climate System
A recent meeting including representatives from ESRL, NCDC, and two NOAA Joint
Institutes discussed collaborations between OAR and NESDIS on the topic of water
in the climate system.
3 Aug 09
ESRL's Geo-targeted Alerting System
Installed at First Pilot Sites
The Geo-Targeted Alerting System (GTAS) has been installed at the first pilot
sites in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. NWS forecasters and local Emergency
Operations officials can run a NOAA-developed dispersion model and collaborate
on alerting the public to airborne threats.
22 Jul 09
NOAA Taking Lead Role in Renewable Energy
Meeting
At the American Meteorological Society's summer meeting, ESRL's Betsy
Weatherhead is serving as co-chair of a portion of the meeting addressing
renewable energy.
29 May 09
Science on a Sphere® in
France
The first permanent European installation of NOAA's Science On a
Sphere® has been dubbed "Globaloscope" by the City of Sciences
and Industry Museum in Paris where it will be on display in an exhibition
called "Objective Earth: The Revolution of the Satellites."
30 Apr 09
NOAA Featured in Second Life Case
Study
NOAA's Second Life presence has been featured in a case study by Linden Lab,
creators of the world's leading 3D virtual world environment.
10 Apr 09
HRRR Hourly-Updated 3-km Storm-Resolving
Forecasts Now Cover US East of Rockies
The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), an hourly 3-km convective-scale model
initialized from the radar-assimilating Rapid Update Cycle (RUC), now covers
the eastern two-thirds of the contiguous United States.
7 Apr 09
ESRL's Strong Presence at Federal
Consortium for Virtual Worlds
ESRL's Eric Hackathorn will represent NOAA at the Federal Consortium for
Virtual Worlds' 2nd Annual Conference.
31 Mar 09
ESRL's VACT Aids Anchorage Forecasters
During Mount Redoubt Eruptions
The GSD-developed Volcanic Ash Coordination Tool (VACT) is being used in real
time for all of Mount Redoubt's recent eruptions to determine location, areal
extent, and movement of ash.
30 Mar 09
ESRL Observations Now Used in NWS
Operational Tool
GSD-developed GPS water vapor observations are combined with satellite estimates
in a new Blended Total Precipitable Water product. This allows NWS forecasters
to better anticipate and forecast heavy rain and flooding events.
9 Mar 09
First Public SphereCast on ESRL's
SOS®
On April 1, climate change researcher Stephen Schneider will use ESRL's
Science on a Sphere® to illustrate a talk broadcast to museums
around the world.
6 Feb 09
FEMA Funding ESRL in GTAS Pilot
Project
ESRL's Global Systems Division will receive funding from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) for a proposed project involving the Geo-Targeted
Alerting System (GTAS).
5 Jan 09
NOAA Presence at NASA Dryden Global Hawk
Event
The first non-military Global Hawk Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) will be
flown from Edwards Air Force Base starting 15 January.