Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch

Weaver, Combs, Dostalek, Grasso, Motta, Winston

• Research on two GOES-10 test data sets began with an extensive literature search and interviews with Storm Prediction Center and NWS local forecasters to try to determine the state of the art in synoptic analysis currently used by severe and tornadic storm forecasters.  This part of the project continues, as researchers try to establish a consensus.  Meanwhile, interactions with the Birmingham NWS forecast office has been robust, but is on hold for a few weeks while the Science and Operations Officer (SOO) fulfills fiscal year-end obligations and conference commitments.  For their part, the Minneapolis NWS office has completed a detailed evaluation of the Comfrey, MN tornado, and has upgraded it to an F4.
• The first VISIT training module “Detecting Low-level Thunderstorm Outflow Boundaries Using GOES at Night” of the 31 May 1996 severe weather case has been revised and delivered to 28 WFOs, 4 regional headquarters, and the NWS training center.  Reviews and comments were incorporated into the current version which is available via three mediums. The OPTEL medium is the standard NWS training vehicle for distance learning. It is also available on an interactive web-based training application which we call VISITview. This particular session has enhancements which stress the use of satellite and radar together and use of topographic imagery with satellite imagery.
• A multi-author journal article on the Fort Collins flood of 28 July 1997 was submitted to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.  Formal reviews have been returned and require minor revisions only.  These reviews are currently in progress.  The paper is a joint effort by CIRA, the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science, and the Colorado Climate Center.
• A  Photo of Quarter submission  to Weather and Forecasting this quarter illustrates the development of new, second-day convection within a decaying Mesoscale Convective Vortex.

Zehr, Hilgendorf, Knaff, Vaughn

• The investigation of environmental vertical wind shear influences on hurricane intensity change continues.  A three-way approach to assess vertical wind shear forcing on intensity change has been developed and tested.  For this approach,  IR satellite image cloud asymmetries are objectively measured, multi-level analysis of vertical shear is averaged over storm-centered circles using numerical analyses, and high density satellite winds are averaged in up to four layers.  Recently, a conceptual model of the role of vertical shear in tropical cyclone intensity changes has been posed for testing.  An outline of a paper for journal article submission on this topic was completed.  Also, an abstract was submitted to the upcoming AMS “Hurricane” Conference in Dallas, TX, January 1999.
• Research continues with the use of SRSO (1-min) data sets. The overall objectives are: 1) to improve understanding of tropical cyclone intensity and structure change by extensive analysis of special, high-resolution observational data, and 2) to develop satellite products and techniques for tropical cyclone forecasting. The analysis includes GOES-9 SRSO (at 90W) imagery (collected at CIRA), 10-sec “Hurricane Hunter” aircraft observations, (obtained from NOAA HRD), along with  high density satellite wind sets (obtained from CIMSS).  Detailed upper level wind analysis of Hurricane Marilyn (1995) is being carried out using cloud drift wind measurements.  Aircraft and SRSO imagery from Hurricane Luis (1995) are also being studied.
• SRSO data from Hurricane Luis has been sectorized and is ready for storage on CD-ROM.  The data format has been changed to 1-byte,  and data has been properly navigated.  These data will be used to study upper level flow patterns and the evolution of convective asymmetries close to the hurricane’s center. Using SRSO data gathered on the 5th and 6th of September 1995 over Hurricane Luis: 1) Upper level winds have been created by manually tracking visible cloud elements resulting in 13 hourly wind data sets, and 2) convective asymmetries have been tracked for a 32 hour period.
• Digital Channel 4 data for most of the tropical cyclones which have occurred in the eastern Pacific and Atlantic hurricane basins during the 1998 have been archived in a sequential manner, and are ready for permanent storage on CD-ROM.  Average images of mature hurricanes (1998) which have been rotated with respect to motion have been created to study the convective asymmetries that result from the forward motion of the storms.  Preliminary results will be presented at the annual AMS Conference in January.
• Two short abstracts were submitted and accepted to the 23rd AMS Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology.  Reviewer’s comments were received concerning a journal note submitted to The Journal of Oceanic and Atmospheric Technology.
• A new project was undertaken at CIRA to get all available tropical cyclone geostationary (excluding SRSO) IR imagery into a common format on CD-ROM to improve data processing for satellite tropical cyclone applications testing and technique development studies. Many worthwhile studies are often not completed due to inefficient access to large data samples on tape storage.  This will alleviate that problem. The data sets are from a combination of Tropical RAMSDIS and CIRA archives, and include tropical cyclones in the Pacific, and Atlantic and GMS and Meteosat imagery as well as GOES.  

Zehr, Weaver, Connell

• R. Zehr is serving as Coordinator for Tropical Cyclones with the Disaster Management Support Project of the Committee on Earth Observing Systems (CEOS) / Integrated Global Observing Strategy (IGOS).  This Project is chaired by Helen Wood (NESDIS).  A final report for the Tropical Cyclone Team has been completed and is being incorporated into a Workshop Report to be presented to the CEOS Plenary Session. The Workshop held in Silver Spring, MD, in April, 1998, included hazards due to wildfires, earthquakes, tropical cyclones, oil spills, drought and flash floods.  An Executive Summary of the Tropical Cyclones Hazard Team and additional information on tropical cyclones resides on the CEOS disaster information web page which can be found at     http://www.ceos.noaa.gov/findex.html

Hillger, Campbell, Combs

• An additional nighttime case has been added to the Web pages explaining Principal Component Imagery (PCI) provided by the RAMM Team.  The new case compares PCIs at night with those during the day (provided previously).  The main difference between the day and night cases is a shift in the component images because of the lack of reflected visible radiation in GOES channels 1 and 2 at night. 
• A GOES Surface Skin Temperature Product has been added back to the two prototype RAMSDIS units showing imagery from GOES-east and GOES-west at CIRA.  Currently the product is generated for the latest image only from each satellite and is compared to the GOES channel-4 image at the same time.  A special skin temperature color table helps the user distinguish differences between the images.  The Tsfc Product is generated by adding twice the channel 4-5 difference back into GOES channel-4.  This effectively eliminates atmospheric absorption in this channel, producing an image which more closely reflects the actual surface temperature.  By comparing the Tsfc Product and GOES channel-4, the user gets an indication of the amount of atmospheric absorption, mainly due to water vapor.

 Surface temperature product and accompanying GOES infrared channel-4 image.  Both images are enhanced using a special color table to highlight surface temperatures changes.  Note the warmer temperatures in the surface temperature product compared to the normal GOES channel-4 image.  The temperature difference is the correction applied to compensate for atmospheric absorption.

Hillger, Campbell, Dostalek

• The shortwave albedo product has now been implemented on the prototype GOES Sounder RAMSDIS at CIRA.  This product is similar to the 3.9 µm albedo product being tested on the GOES-West and GOES-East Imagers, however this product is generated from GOES Sounder channels 18 (3.7 µm) and 8 (11 µm).  The shortwave albedo is a possible substitute for the nighttime fog / daytime reflectivity product available from the GOES Imager.  A single equation is used to generate this product day or night, unlike the fog/reflectivity product.  The image product is best used to view low clouds such as fog and stratus, water clouds which are highly reflective of solar radiation in the shortwave window region of the spectrum.

Shortwave (3.7 µm) albedo from the GOES Sounder channel 18, day and night.  Low clouds appear as white.  Colored portions are color-enhanced high clouds.  Black areas at night are thin cirrus clouds.
 

• The Prototype Sounder RAMSDIS at CIRA has now been upgraded to McIDAS version 7.2.  This upgrade is intended to bring all RAMSDIS units to the same level to avoid having to support different versions of ‘operational’ software.

Hillger
 

• The GRAYOVER program (used to overlay unit scales on images) now has a rounded temperature scale option.  Previously the temperatures were output at every 8 brightness counts in 4 K and 8 K temperature increments in the two portions of the bi-linear scale.  The new scale shows temperatures every 5 K, and due to the constant temperature increment, the compression of the bi-linear temperature scale at the cold end is obvious when the numbers are displayed over the gray bar.  The executable (for McIDAS 7.2) and the help file for this program can be obtained from the RAMM Team.

Note the gray bar overlay showing temperatures at 5 K increments.  This temperature scale emphasizes the bi-linear look-up-table used to display most GOES infrared imagery.  That table uses a compressed scale of 1 K / count for temperatures below -31°C (242 K), compared to 0.5 K / count for warmer temperatures.

Grasso, Hilgendorf

• Satellite data have been collected for several severe weather events of 1998.  These data will be used to compare satellite-derived precipitable water with gage-observed precipitation.

Connell, Combs

• Data collection continued for every hour of the day this quarter using both GOES-8 and GOES-9 over the U.S.  This collection continued until data transmission was discontinued in July when the satellite was turned off.  GOES-10 collection started September 1, 1998.
• June, July, and August 1998 statistics/cloud cover images for GOES-8 sectors were produced for the visible imagery for each daylight hour.  March, April, and May 1998 statistics were calculated for GOES-8 sectors for channels 2, 3, 4, and 5, every other hour.  Produced June 1998 statistics/cloud cover for GOES-W sectors for visible channel and statistics for other channels.  Products were not made for July and August due to problems with GOES-9 and GOES-10 movement.
• Wind regime radiance averages were computed for May, June, and July 1998 for channels 3 and 4.  Also produced May, June, and July 1998 wind regime radiance averages, cloud frequency, and cloud percentage for channel 1.
• Improvements were made to the program that combines climatologies from different months.  Two combined climatology sets were then produced for the 10.7 mm channel: January, February, and March of 1998 and April, May and June of 1998.  The average was done for every four hours and for all wind regimes over FFC (Atlanta, GA), BOX (Boston, MA), EAX (Kansas City, MO), SLC (Salt Lake City, UT), MTR (Monterey, CA) and LOX (Los Angeles, CA).
• Two combined climatology sets for the visible channel were produced: January, February, and March of 1998 and April, May and June of 1998.  These included average and cloud cover percentage and were done for every other hour during daylight periods and for all wind regimes over FFC (Atlanta, GA), BOX (Boston, MA), EAX (Kansas City, MO), SLC (Salt Lake City, UT), MTR (Monterey, CA) and LOX (Los Angeles, CA).
• A Fog/Reflectivity program was developed for future use in climatologies
• Collection of PCGRIDDS – ETA 12 UTC model data continues daily.  The gridded data are used to generate a mean boundary layer (~1000-700 hPa) wind speed and a resultant boundary layer wind direction to designate a wind regime for use in the  monthly satellite climatologies.  This information is being used in the development of the CONUS monthly climatologies.

Grasso

• The results of a numerical simulation of a supercell showed that the genesis of left and right movers was due to lifting along the expanding outflow boundary from the initial storm. Further analysis revealed that the genesis of the left and right movers was independent of the storm splitting process.
• A paper titled “The Dependence of Simulated Supercell Morphology on the Initial State” was submitted to the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.

Vaughn, Campbell

• G. Campbell visited Chris Veldon at CIMSS and began a collaboration to merge automatic wind analysis with the stereo height analysis.
• A number of technical programing issues have been solved including a new REMAP programduring this period.

Zehr, Watson

• SRSO data collection has been coordinated with HRD Aircraft Research Missions and NASA’s CAMEX-3 research flights.  Excellent data sets were archived with Hurricanes Bonnie and Danielle in August.

Weaver, Motta, Zehr
 

• Interaction continues with Hurricane Research Division (HRD) at AOML on use of Tropical RAMSDIS and collaborative research projects.
• Collaborative work with Chris Landsea at NOAA/HRD, and Roger Pielke, Sr. at CSU has resulted in two journal papers.  These were submitted to Climate Change, and Geophysical Research Letters, respectively.  A prior paper submitted with Roger Pielke, Sr. was published in The Journal of Geophysical Research, and a paper resulting from my dissertation work was published in Weather and Forecasting.

Zehr, Grasso, Molenar, Weaver
 

• J. Weaver is helping coordinate reviewer responses to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society article on the Fort Collins flash flood of 28 July 1997.  The paper is a joint effort between CIRA, the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science and the Colorado Climate Center.
• Continued cooperative work with Dr. William Gray’s project includes participation in project meetings, data management consultations, real-time tropical weather discussions, and class lectures.  Daily weather briefings during the hurricane season using tropical RAMSDIS are organized by CSU graduate students and attended by a diverse group of faculty, students and staff.
• D. Molenar served on the panel for NSF UNIDATA equipment proposal review. 

Dostalek, Motta, Winston, Molenar, Weaver
 

• J. Weaver will make a presentation on September 22-24 at the Second Annual Great Divide Workshop.  This workshop is a regional NWS sponsored event hosted by the forecast office in Great Falls, Montana.
• B. Motta was invited to give satellite training seminars at the National Weather Service office for the Los Angeles metropolitan area.  The main focus was an intensive lecture on the GOES imager channels with emphasis on the shortwave infrared imagery and products. The office has a RAMSDIS but many of the staff members needed familiarization. This effort was coordinated with Kevin Schrab at NWS/Western Region to increase their knowledge of the RAMSDIS capabilities in the short term.
• K. Winston completed the WSR-88D Distance Learning Course.  Course included teletraining classes, PUP training, CD-ROM modules and exams.  She will receive a certificate of completion when all exams have been graded.
• B. Connell continued her interaction with Ken Gould, NWS Tallahassee, Florida, regarding the climatology project.  A web-based example of the Summer Sea-breeze composites Ken has developed has been put together and will be made available soon.
• B. Motta initiated a series of interactions regarding AWIPS’ inability to process Rapid Scan Operations data from GOES satellites.  The AWIPS program staff was not aware of the impact and scope of the problem.  Initial e-mails to regional NWS personnel escalated to include NWS SOOs, and NWS/NESDIS management.  The result was an AWIPS-initiated conference call with NWS regions and an Office of Meteorology conference call with CIRA.  A very lucid understanding of the scope, causes, and possible solutions was developed by AWIPS personnel.  The AWIPS team has now fixed this problem.  NWS offices can now receive and view GOES imagery within 2 minutes of its transmittal (during typical RSO and office warning operations).
• K. Winston is working with Jim LaDue on the Satellite Multi-Spectral Analysis teletraining that will  include his work from his presentation on Multi-Spectral analysis for the COMET Satellite Mesoscale Meteorology course.
• B. Motta of the Virtual Institute for Satellite Integration Training (VISIT) participated in a National Weather Service (NWS) distance learning session conducted by Bernard Meisner of the NWS Southern Region about hurricane intensity forecasting with the current suite of Tropical Prediction Center models and products.  R. Zehr and J. Knaff also observed the session.

Connell, Vaughn
 

• Dr. Vilma Castro visited CIRA on 23-24 July  1998.  Progress and direction of the satellite climatology/composites were discussed as well as display of gridded model data on satellite images.  Vilma gave a seminar on the focus of the satellite climatology effort in Costa Rica.
• The schedule for the 2-week RMTC Training to be held in Barbados October 5 through 16, 1998 was finalized.  Presentations and lab exercises were developed.  For more information, see the RMTC/WMO heading under Technology Transfer and Training.  Other lectures to be presented  include findings from a Case Study entitled “Heavy Rainfall over the Southern Windward Islands – 1996 Oct. 25-26”,  “Network Resources and HTML”, “Dvorak Technique”, and “Sea Surface Temperature:  Display and Analysis in Real Time.”
• Compilation of climatology data over the Barbados area continues.  CDs are mailed at the end of each month  and reviewed by the RMTC.  They have found the monthly minimums, maximums, and averages to be of value during the convective season.

Molenar, Watson, Dostalek, Weaver, Zehr

Meetings:
 

• B. Motta, K. Winston, and D. Hillger attended a meeting in Madison, WI, August 11 and 12, to draft an outline of the Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education, and Training (COMET) Professional Development Series for Integrated Analysis.  The meeting was very productive and spanned the research, training, and operational communities with the common goal of effectively using the modern NOAA data sets most effectively in the NWS warning and forecast environment. The executive producer of the series is Tony Mostek. B. Motta is the producer for the segment concerned with multi-source data displays.  Further details of the meeting can be found at  http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/misc/irt_meeting.html
• D. Molenar met with K. Schrab of NWS Western Region Headquarters to discuss AWIPS progress and planning on September 15 in Boulder, CO.

Visitors:
 

• Dr. William Sharp of ITT, Fort Wayne IN, visited CIRA/RAMM on July 22 and was given a tour of the satellite ground station and a demonstration of the RAMSDIS units used to collect and display GOES-East and GOES-West data.  The theme of the visit was the use of existing visible and IR data and opportunities for future satellite instrumentation.
• Dr. James F.W. Purdom, Director of ORA, visited RAMM Team on July 20, 22, 23, and 24.  He met with the Director of CIRA and the Colorado State University Atmospheric Science Department Head to discuss Institute research plans and strategy for FY 1999-FY 2000.  At CIRA, he also received an update and demo of Virtual Institute for Satellite Integration Training activity, reviewed Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit hurricane microwave research, and prepared staff for World Meteorological Organization Barbados training exercise to be held  the first quarter of FY 1999.
• Dr. Vilma Castro of the University of Costa Rica Regional and Meteorological Training Center (RMTC)  visited the  RAMMT July 23 and 24.  She gave a presentation of work done with satellite climatologies and efforts made toward creating a Costa Rican RAMSDIS Online.  Dr. Castro also met with staff to discuss future RMTC plans.
• Mr. Yang Jun and Mr. Zhao Licheng, visiting scientists from the People’s Republic of China, have arrived at CIRA.  While at CIRA, they will work on joint activities in meteorological workstation and analysis software development.  Mr. Yang is the Director of the System Technology Division and Mr. Zhao is the Director of the Computer Division at the Satellite Meteorology Center in Beijing, China.  Mr. Yang will stay at CIRA for three months and Mr. Zhao for one year.
• Dr. William Timpson of Colorado State University’s Center for Teaching and Learning reviewed our Virtual Institute for Satellite Integration Training (VISIT) distance learning approach and current training session.  His visit followed a seminar given to the Atmospheric Science Department which raised important issues in the teaching and learning process.

Phillips, Dostalek, Hilgendorf, Motta, Weaver

• The style and the content of the Team’s Web pages, which describe RAMM/CIRA activities and accomplishments, are in the process of being improved and updated.  At this time, about 40% of this work is completed, with the remainder to be done next quarter.

Vaughn, Staff

• The on-line, daily training and discussion effort known as Satellite Interpretation Discussion continues to be well received by the user community and continues as a regular activity of the RAMMT.

Phillips, Dostalek, Hilgendorf, Motta, Weaver

• The Team’s first computer-based learning module/tutorial, “An Introduction to GOES-8”, is undergoing an extensive revision.  Comparisons with GOES-7 are being removed and GOES-10 imagery, along with that from GOES-8, is being utilized to demonstrate the capabilities inherent in their correct usage.  This upgrade also provides additional insight into the use and utility of this data based upon an additional 4 years’ experience by the RAMM-CIRA meteorologists since the original tutorial was released.  The revision is now about 50% completed, with the balance scheduled to be done during the next quarter.

Molenar, Connell, Dostalek, Gosden, Smith, Hillger

• A Research RAMSDIS-OS2 5.0 upgrade has been completed.  The upgrade featured implementing the McIDAS 7.2 along with more usage of the Abstract Distributed Data Environment (ADDE) compliant commands to create a local data environment.  These implementations improved the data retrieval process on the RAMSDIS and allowed a software update on the data servers.  The Research RAMSDIS systems includes 50% more applications for use by the scientists here.
• An additional upgrade for the sites that have their RAMSDIS configured differently is now complete. The upgrade was distributed via ftp and the implementation completed smoothly.
• The 1998 Hurricane Season is the fourth year that Tropical RAMSDIS has been used to analyze tropical cyclones in real-time and collect research data sets. Global tropical coverage using 4 geostationary satellites, high- resolution multispectral GOES imagery along with international conventional observations and global numerical analysis are the main features used to test and develop applications for tropical cyclone analysis and forecasting.  High density satellite winds obtained from CIMSS/Univ. of  Wisconsin are also displayed and used in analysis.
• New Tropical RAMSDIS  products and improvements for this season include the capability to ingest and display SSMI, AVHRR and MSU data, scatterometer winds, aircraft observations, sea-surface temperature analysis, and 1 km resolution visible images in automated center relative animation.  A Tropical RAMSDIS at the NOAA Hurricane Research Division (HRD), Miami, FL, is also supported, and is used for aircraft mission planning, data archive, and cooperative research projects.  Daily weather briefings at both sites during the hurricane season generate fruitful discussions and provide training for a wide audience.
•  RAMSDIS units displaced by AWIPS have now been deployed at Lake Charles, LA and Jacksonville, FL.

Motta, Winston
 

• The VISIT staff attended the first gathering of central region Science and Operations Officers (SOO).  The NWS plans for satellite integration training were presented as well as our first distance learning lesson.  The discussion period clarified the importance of the field offices requesting GOES Rapid Scan Operations data during significant weather events.  The SOOs were invited to participate in collaborative activities with CIRA and CIMSS aimed at demonstrating higher frequency imaging capabilities and the use of GOES data in the AWIPS warning environment .
• K. Winston attended an Audiographics course at the Teletraining Institute in Stillwater, OK and learned techniques for developing and presenting teletraining sessions.  She prepared and presented a mini-teletraining session during the course.
• The first VISIT training module “Detecting Low-level Thunderstorm Outflow Boundaries Using GOES at Night” of the 31 May 1996 severe weather case has been revised and delivered to 28 WFOs, 4 regional headquarters, and the NWS training center.  See  RESEARCH Meteorological) Severe Storms  section for further details.
• K. Winston learned to lead teletraining sessions by observing all the LTO training sessions already held.

Weaver, Dostalek, Hillger, Molenar, Zehr
 

• A number of RAMM/CIRA Team members presented lectures and workshops over a two week as part of the Satellite Meteorology class at the Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education, and Training (COMET) in Boulder, Colorado.
• B. Motta and K. Winston attended a meeting to draft an outline of the Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education, and Training (COMET) Professional Development Series for integrated analysis was held in Madison WI.  Attendees spanned the research, training, and operational communities with the common goal of effectively using the modern NOAA data sets most effectively in the NWS warning and forecast environment. The executive producer of the series is Tony Mostek.  B. Motta is the producer for the segment concerned with multi- source data displays.

Connell, Vaughn
 

• The collection and archival of the hourly visible, 3.9, 6.7, and 10.7 micrometer imagery for climatologies in Costa Rica continues.  The night transfer of the imagery via the Internet continues to supplement the poor data ingest during the day due to heavy Internet traffic.  These images are being used for a local RAMSDIS online.  Hourly climatology imagery (visible, 3.9, 6.7 and 10.7  micrometer) for June, July, and August 1998 were sent to Costa Rica.
• Interactions continue with Rosario Alferro to quantify the frequency of fires in Central American Countries during the dry months of January, February, March and April.  The archived climatology imagery will allow us to look at 1997 as well as 1998.  In relation to ths work scaling errors were broadly assessed for both the fog product and the reflectivity product.
• The schedule for the 2-week RMTC Training to be held in Barbados in early October was finalized.  Preparation for presentations and labs have been completed.  Lectures were prepared on Satellite Composites/Climatologies, Water Vapor Imagery, Aviation Hazards focusing on Volcanic Ash, Weather Analysis and Forecasting related to Mesoscale Features and the interactions/experiences in working with the RMTC in Costa Rica.  Other lectures to be presented  include findings from a Case Study entitled “Heavy Rainfall over the Southern Windward Islands – 1996 Oct. 25-26”,  “Network Resources and HTML”, “Dvorak Technique”, and “Sea Surface Temperature:  Display and Analysis in Real Time.”
• Compilation of climatology data over the Barbados area continues.  CDs are mailed at the end of each month  and reviewed by the RMTC.  They have found the monthly minimums, maximums, and averages to be of value during the convective season.

Fryer
 

Received:
 

• D. Hillger attended a Fred Pryor Seminar on “How to Supervise People” on July 7.  Seminar topics included: leadership qualities, managing others’ time, job satisfaction as a supervisor, looking at the long-term in developing your team, your people as your key resource, and the supervisor as the intermediary between workers and upper management.
• D. Hillger attended a Demo Project Management class given in Boulder CO on August 27 to lean about the new Performance Pay System (PPS) being implemented throughout NESDIS and to lean the procedures and responsibilities as the rating official for the RAMM Team.

Given:
 

• J. Weaver, J. Dostalek, D. Watson, T. Smith, B. Motta and B. Connell gave presentations at the COMET-sponsored Satellite Meteorology courses in Boulder, September 8 through 18.

Watson
 

• RAMSDIS (Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Team Advanced Meteorological Satellite Demonstration and Interpretation System) Online has been updated with current imagery covering the tropics.  Added were two large- scale visible and water vapor loops, two floating visible and thermal infrared loops, and a new ‘storm- relative’ loop which updates the loop relative to a given storm velocity.  One may also see just the latest images for these given products.
• Also added to RAMSDIS Online were sectors covering fires burning in Brazil.  Visible and Reflectivity/Fire Product loops were added showing the smoke plums and hot spots of these fires. 
• The Florida Fire Imagery available on RAMSDIS Online showing real-time Visible and Fire/Reflectivity products were used recently on ABC morning shows: Good Morning America, World News Now, and a local Miami FL affiliate station.  The Web page has not only been a hit with the general public but also with the Incident Response Meteorologists in the field trying to locate these fires.

Watson
 

• RAMSDIS (Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Team Advanced Meteorological Satellite Demonstration and Interpretation System) Online has been updated with current imagery covering the tropics.  Added were two large- scale visible and water vapor loops, two floating visible and thermal infrared loops, and a new ‘storm- relative’ loop which updates the loop relative to a given storm velocity.  One may also see just the latest images for these given products.
• Also added to RAMSDIS Online were sectors covering fires burning in Brazil.  Visible and Reflectivity/Fire Product loops were added showing the smoke plums and hot spots of these fires. 
• The Florida Fire Imagery available on RAMSDIS Online showing real-time Visible and Fire/Reflectivity products were used recently on ABC morning shows: Good Morning America, World News Now, and a local Miami FL affiliate station.  The Web page has not only been a hit with the general public but also with the Incident Response Meteorologists in the field trying to locate these fires.

Fryer

• D. Hillger gave a seminar on GOES Calibration, Image Scaling, and Noise to CIRA/RAMM personnel on August 18.  The seminar covered material recently revised and now available on the Web about the display and limitations of GOES imagery.  It was found that information about display of GOES imagery in 10-bit versus 8-bit forms is not widely know even among those familiar with GOES data.
• Dr. William Timpson of Colorado State University’s Center for Teaching and Learning reviewed our Virtual Institute for Satellite Integration Training (VISIT) distance learning approach and current training session on September 9.  His visit followed a seminar given to the Atmospheric Science Department which raised important issues in the teaching and learning process.
• See  NWS  and  WMO for more seminars and presentations.