NCAR/ISSE - Atmospheric Special Interest Group

About SIG

Atmospheric Special Interest Group (SIG) was formed at the International ESRI User Conference in San Diego on July 10, 2003. Near forty SIG's participants represented government agencies, universities, research labs, and the private sector.

The meeting began with a presentation from ESRI's Steve Grise and Joe Breman on the benefits of initiating an atmospheric data modeling effort, drawing on the ArcHydro data model as an example of success.

It was discussed that the atmospheric SIG and the data modeling efforts will help to establish a working dialog between ESRI and the atmospheric sciences community about data representation issues and to address the needs of the atmospheric community in ESRI software development, for example temporal data management and improved raster data support.

A second topic that was discussed at the SIG meeting was the development of netCDF converters for ingesting data into ArcGIS products. Development of a Java-based converter is underway at NCAR/UCAR and will be available for testing in the fall of 2004. In addition a two-year project is just getting underway for developing combined support for netCDF and HDF-5 through a single API.

Lori Armstrong is the new "Atmospheric Industry Manager" at ESRI and will be coordinating future SIG's activities. To continue discussions on developing an ESRI atmospheric data model, a workshop has been proposed for January 2004, in conjunction with the AMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington.