Planned Product Improvements For The NOAA Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS)

Abstract

The NOAA Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) is a NOAA Research system, developed at the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), that serves the meteorological community by supporting observation collection integration, quality control, and distribution of thousands of NOAA and non-NOAA observations, including over 60,000 surface mesonet stations from local, state, and federal agencies, and private networks, as well as upper-air datasets including multi-agency wind profiler and automated, commercial aircraft observations. The mesonet database includes Road Weather Information System observations from state Departments of Transportation, as well as real-time observations from the Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS) network, the Cooperative Mesonets in the Western U.S. (MesoWest) network, the WeatherBug and UrbaNet networks operated by AWS Convergence Technologies, Inc., the Citizen Weather Observing Program (CWOP) network, and many others. MADIS receives these observations in different formats, units, and time stamps, and provides them in a single uniform database. Additionally, MADIS supplies data providers with quality control and station monitoring information to assist in their maintenance activities and to enhance and promote the mutual benefits of public/private data sharing. Organizations receiving MADIS data feeds include National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices, the NWS National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and many major universities and commercial weather businesses. In 2007, the NOAA Research Council and NOAA Transition Board rated MADIS as one of NOAA's highest priority research-to-operations transition projects. Overall plans for the transition include the implementation of MADIS real-time capabilities at the NWS and the transfer of existing MADIS saved datasets and future archive responsibilities to the NESDIS National Climatic Data Center. The NWS transition approach will consist of an integrated NWS Telecommunications (TOC) and National Centers for Environmental Prediction Central Operations (NCO) distributed system. Initial Operating Capability (IOC) for the NWS MADIS system is scheduled for 2010. ESRL will remain as the primary MADIS Research and Development organization, and will host a research-to-operations test environment facility within the ESRL/GSD Central Facility. This paper will provide a status update on the existing MADIS system, and will also cover planned product improvements and upgrades to MADIS datasets and services, including those necessary to support 1) the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), 2) the National Surface Weather Observing System (NSWOS), 3) the modernized Historic Climate Network (HCN-M), 4) the Next Generation NOAA Profiler Network (NGNPN), and 5) the National Mesonet. Companion papers, by D. Helms et al., J.C. Edwards et al., and M.F. Barth et al. will provide additional information on the MADIS transition to NOAA operations, upgraded MADIS web services in support of NextGen, and updated observational metadata in support of the National Mesonet.