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Mesowest: Cooperative Mesonets in the Western United States

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Mesowest: Cooperative Mesonets in the Western United States MESOWEST: COOPERATIVE MESONETS IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES BY J. HOREL, M. SPLITT, L. DUNN, J. PECHMANN, B. WHITE, C. CILIBERTI, S. LAZARUS, J. SLEMMER, D. ZAFF, AND J. BURKS By surmounting the technical difficulties of collecting, integrating, and disseminating surface observations from many different organizations, MesoWest is able to provide research and operational meteorologists with useful, real-time data from the western states. ne of the major goals of the United States nities and observations are currently reported hourly Weather Research Program is to advance the with updates at more frequent intervals when specific capabilities of the nation’s weather observing weather criteria are met. O system. In the western United States, this sys- The scientific community has provided guidance tem includes over 350 automated and manual report- on critical issues and research opportunities to the ing surface stations deployed and maintained by the Weather Research Program through a series of meet- National Weather Service (NWS), Federal Aviation ings and published summaries. The Second Prospec- Administration, and Department of Defense. Since tus Development Team of the Weather Research Pro- the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) sta- gram recommended that more, and better, tions comprise the majority of these stations, the re- observations are needed over the mountainous terrain sulting network will be referred to here as the ASOS of the western United States due to the complexity of network. The ASOS network is designed primarily to the orographically disturbed airflow and the often meet the needs of the weather and aviation commu- unrepresentative nature of the existing observations (Dabberdt and Schlatter 1996). Smith et al. (1997) summarize some of the societal impacts of terrain- AFFILIATIONS: HOREL, SPLITT, PECHMANN, WHITE, AND CILIBERTI— induced flows over the western United States. They NOAA Cooperative Institute for Regional Prediction, University of recommend, in part, that detailed mesoscale datasets Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; DUNN—Salt Lake City WSFO, Salt Lake be acquired to improve understanding of the physi- City, Utah; LAZARUS—Florida Institute for Technology, Melbourne, cal processes responsible for the multiscale effects of Florida; SLEMMER—Salt Lake City NWS CWSU, Salt Lake City, Utah; complex terrain, including orographic precipitation ZAFF AND BURKS—Scientific Services Division, Western Region and trapping of cold air in basins and valleys. Fritsch National Weather Service, Salt Lake City, Utah et al. (1998) note that many surface weather observ- CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: John D. Horel, University of Utah, Department of Meteorology, 145 South 1460 East Room 819, Salt ing networks are not currently available to the Lake City, UT 84112-0110 national centers for operational forecasting. They rec- E-mail: [email protected] ommend that there is a need to (i) improve accessi- In final form 20 November 2001 bility to such datasets for the entire meteorological ©2002 American Meteorological Society community; (ii) standardize the quality control and format of the data; (iii) look into the feasibility of es- AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY FEBRUARY 2002 | 211 the state, or approximately 1 sta- TABLE 1. Severe weather statement issued by the Salt Lake City tion per 32 km (Brock et al. 1995). WSFO that included information obtained from MesoWest (MesoWest observations in bold type). A mesonet run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad- WWUS34 KSLC 122252 COR ministration Air Resources Labo- SVSSLC ratory Field Research Division UTC003-011-035-049-057-122315- (Carter and Keislar 2000) exem- plifies a network designed for SEVERE WEATHER STATEMENT...CORECTED ZONE IN HEADER emergency response. The charac- NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SALT LAKE CITY UT teristics of the observations vary 450 PM MDT TUE JUN 12 2001 considerably from one network to ...STRONG THUNDERSTORM WARNING ALONG THE WASATCH FRONT another: number of stations de- UNTIL 515PM... ployed, types of weather param- A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR HIGH WINDS WILL CON- TINUE ALONG THE WASATCH FRONT UNTIL 515 PM. THIS WARNING eters, station siting, spacing be- COVERS THE AREA FROM NEAR BRIGHAM CITY IN SOUTHEAST BOX tween stations, method of ELDER COUNTY SOUTH TO THE PROVO AREA IN UTAH COUNTY. A transmission of the observations, LINE OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS HAVE PRODUCED WIDESPREAD reporting interval, quality control WIND DAMAGE. NUMBEROUS REPORTS OF TREES AND POWER LINES procedures, frequency at which DOWN ALONG WITH BUILDING DAMAGE HAVE BEEN RECEIVED BY THE observations are available, and NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE. SOME OF THE STRONGER GUSTS format of the observations. INCLUDE...84 MPH AT LAKESIDE...77 MPH NEAR DUGWAY...74 MPH IN SANDY...71 MPH OVER THE GREAT SALT LAKE...68 MPH IN Observational data heteroge- MAGNA...63 MPH IN NORTH SALT LAKE...60 MPH FOOT HILL AREA neity of the automated environ- OF SALT-LAKE CITY. mental networks in the United States is often presumed to be a significant obstacle for their use in tablishing a data archive center; and (iv) improve operational applications. However, since the spatial methods to process and assimilate the mesoscale data coverage of the ASOS network is insufficient to cap- into operational model analysis and initialization ture many of the local and mesoscale weather phe- schemes. nomena that impact the public, all NWS Weather Fore- To improve monitoring of weather hazards on the cast Offices (WFOs) already strive to obtain access to mesoscale and climate variability across the nation, the manual and automated observations of current weather NWS has begun to test the automation of the current conditions in their county warning areas. Table 1 is NWS Cooperative Weather Observer (Coop) Network an example of the application by a Salt Lake City NWS to form a national mesonet. Such automation could forecaster of all available observations, including spot- potentially provide weather observations in real time ter reports and mesonet observations, to warn the pub- from over 5000 sites around the country (Dombrowsky lic about impending hazardous weather conditions. 2001). This effort stems from the recommendations The local arrangements at WFOs for access to au- of the NWS Modernization Committee (1998). tomated weather stations rely upon specialized soft- Thousands of automated environmental monitor- ware or resources that vary from one data provider ing stations, independent of the ASOS and Coop net- to another. The Local Data Acquisition and Display works, have already been installed in the United (LDAD) software developed by the Forecast Systems States. Meyer and Hubbard (1992) and Tucker (1997) Laboratory (Jesuroga et al. 1998) is available to uti- surveyed the deployment of automated weather sta- lize local observations in the Advanced Weather In- tions in the entire United States and western United teractive Processing System (AWIPS). Many WFOs States, respectively. Hubbard and Sivakumar (2001) in the western United States (e.g., Boise, Idaho; Boul- provide a comprehensive summary of many of the der, Colorado; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Great Falls, Mis- current automated networks that are available in the souri; Missoula, Montana; Monterey, California; United States. As noted in all of these surveys, each Reno, Nevada; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Seattle, observing network has been designed to meet the Washington) are collecting, and redistributing via the needs of the agency or firm that installed it. The Okla- Intenet, observations from automated weather sta- homa Mesonet, for example, was designed for agri- tions. In some instances, these activities have built cultural, hydrological, and meteorological monitor- upon collaborative projects with nearby universities ing and consists of at least 1 station in each county of such as with the Real-time Environmental Informa- 212 | FEBRUARY 2002 tion Network and Analysis System (REINAS) Project vide access to long-term climatic records in the west- (Nuss et al. 1998) or the Northwest Regional Model- ern United States. ing Consortium (www.atmos.washington.edu/~cliff/ Financial support for the Utah Mesonet was pro- consortium.html) and with federal agencies (National vided initially by the Cooperative Program for Opera- Interagency Fire Center and NOAA Forecasts Sys- tional Meteorology, Education, and Training tems Laboratory). Effective utilization of these data (COMET). Support for MesoWest has continued resources is hampered, however, by the effort re- from the National Weather Service as part of the ac- quired at the WFO to preprocess the data for use in tivities of the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Re- AWIPS and by the absence of established procedures gional Prediction (CIRP). The Institute conducts a to distribute data in a common format from one WFO broad program of research that includes effort toward to another. improving weather and climate prediction in regions As a cost-effective supplement to the current ASOS of complex terrain. MesoWest is an important com- network, software has been developed to access ponent of the applied research and development un- weather observations at automated stations through- derway at CIRP. The geographic range of MesoWest out the western United States. The program to col- over the western United States is intended to focus lect, process, archive, integrate, and disseminate these research and development on applications common observations is referred to as MesoWest (Horel et al. to that region, for example: weather forecasting
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