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The Second Atmospheric Data Modeling Workshop in San Diego

Atmospheric Data Model Workshop Agenda Meeting Minutes Participants Presentations Workshop 2004 Home Workshop 2005 Home Workshop 2006 Home ADM Workshop Home

Meeting Minutes

Twenty three ADM2 participants met in the San Diego Marriott, Oceanside room, on Friday, 14 Jan 2004 for a one-day ADM (Atmospheric Data Modeling) workshop. The three facilitators met at 8am and immediately rearranged the room into three separate tables to match the three "categories" for ADM objects and use cases, namely:

• Observations
• Forecasts and Analyses
• Integrated Inputs

No one objected to this categorization, and it appears to be a reasonable and understandable distinction for the ADM. It is quite clear that "Integrated Inputs" includes but is not limited to other data models, and also includes "infrastructure" data objects that support ADM Observations and Community Products, e.g. WFO and RFC boundaries, County Warning Areas (CWA), etc.

Lori Armstrong gave a short introduction.

Shipley then introduced the agenda, and we agreed to proceed with an entire morning of presentations/discussions, lunch, and finally splitting up into working groups for the afternoon. Our working group activity allowed each of the three groups/tables to work on the three "categories" with each facilitator.

Morning Presentations

Ben Domenico (UCAR/UNIDATA) discussed salient points from a proposed Interoperability eXperiment (IX) to be presented to the OGC technical committee meeting (hosted by the U.N. the week of 17 Jan 2005) regarding an extension to the Web Coverag Server (WCS) specification.

Lorenzo Bigagli (Stefano Nativi's colleague at the U of Florence) and Ben have an hour on the agenda to describe an IX that in essence proposes to extend the Web Coverage Service (WCS) protocol with a gateway for serving data from THREDDS-integrated servers based on THREDDS, netCDF. Common Data Model, OPeNDAP, ADDE technology via the WCS protocol. On the prototype servers, the datasets will be delivered as "coverages" encoded in three forms: geoTIFF (already operating in the UCAR WCS), NcML-GML (the work of the U of Florence group), and netCDF (a proposed addition to the current list of 5 OGC "blessed" binary encoding formats.) The concept behind this proposed WCS Gateway is described in: http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/content/projects/THREDDS/OGC/WCS-THREDDS%20Gateway.htm

Scott Shipley provided a high level overview of the ADM structure and the charge to the workshop participants. This included a description of the three "categories", a description of the types of data objects within each of the three categories, then a deeper description of the properties of an ADM data object, the example selected being surface observations (a Shipley specialty). We had originally planned two workshop activities to:

• Identify and describe data objects by category, then
• Define the salient properties of each data object.

However, the first task being such a large task that we facilitators decided that the high level categorization needed to be cleaned up before the second task could be reasonably addressed. Shipley's slides

Joe Breman provided a look at his growing "case study", which combines various ADM data taken from various sources at different times. The intention is to show how different types if ADM data are used in ArcGIS, with emphasis on ArcGlobe. The "Atmospheric :Layer Stack" was improved to show ArcGlobe sections. Brian Newton/USAF felt strongly that Space Weather was missing and should be added. Breman's slides

Steve Kopp presented a look at relevant new features in ArcGIS 9.2, which is slated to roll out about January 2006. ArcGIS 9.2 includes netCDF/COARDS point and raster direct read capability, including automatic detection of the 0-360 degree grid orientation. Features are included to support raster animation from the "raster catalog", and Steve is looking for suggestions on how the netCDF layers will be described in the legend.

Beta testers were sought

Lunch Break

The afternoon workshop divided the group into three approximately equal and diverse groups, commenting with "stickies" to the Conceptual Diagram for each of the three ADM categories. The facilitators are tasked with integrating these comments into an improved diagram by 31 January 2005:

Shipley Observations
Boehnert Forecasts and Analyses (Products)
Breman Integrated Inputs

Interesting to note that there were no objections to the term "integrated inputs". It was pointed out by Steve Kopp that this category needed less UML detail, and needed to provide a path to the other external areas. No one in the room seemed to have a grasp as to how broad the Integrated Inputs topics or objects could be, although there was some disagreement as to whether atmospheric scientists would care about the details (aka "furniture") of some of the more arcane model materials. Shipley stated that it would not be our place to pass such judgment.

A distinct definition for objects belonging to "Observations" and
"Forecasts and Analyses" was proposed by Shipley, without objection.
Consensus was that similar data objects would appear in both categories,
and these would be later integrated through a common data structure.

Each group addressed each category in rotation for approximately 20 minutes each. The facilitators then summarized the accumulated comments.

Voluntary action items were assigned as follows:

•  Layer Stack :done for now
     Comments : add Space Weather - Brian Newton
     Order changes logical progression - Scott Shipley
     Revision - Joe Breman
•  Conceptual Framework Diagram Review Committee - Lori Armstrong
•  Add input to conceptual diagram by Feb 28,2005
     May Yuan, Scott Shipley, Jennifer Boehnert, Joe Breman
•  Document case studies / use cases
     Ken Waters - Watch Warning Area
     Ben Domenico, Jennifer Boehnert, Amit Sinha - Forecast Models
     Steve Ansari - Level II and III radar products
     Ruth Warner - FNMOC
     Steve Kopp, Steve Ansari, Goes/Nexrad Historical Data
     Joe Breman - ArcGIS Server implementation with MBARI netCDF data
•  Lori Armstrong - ArcGIS Atmospheric Newsletter
     Jennifer Boehnert, Scott Shipley, Tiffany Vance, Nazi Merati, Steve Ansari - Contributions
•  Lori Armstrong - CD of workshop