MESO, Inc.

185 Jordan Road

Troy, NY 12180

Phone (518) 283-5169 Fax (518) 283-5357

MESO has used its atmospheric modeling technology to implement an automated real-time atmospheric simulation and information service that provides detailed site-specific weather forecast information for a variety of applications. This service has been marketed through a joint venture company called Skybit, Inc. under the name Eweather. The major components of the Eweather operational system are: (1) communications equipment to receive raw and processed data which is gathered or generated by the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in Washington D.C.; (2) a computer system and software to ingest, decode and archive the real-time data; (3) a computer with high floating point performance and a mesoscale atmospheric simulation model; (4) a computer system and software to graphically display the output products from the simulation and generate hard copies of the displays; and (5) communications devices to disseminate the output products to users via email or fax transmission.

The basic set of data required for real-time mesoscale atmospheric simulations is disseminated by NCEP in three separate data streams: (1) the Domestic Data Service (DDS); (2) the International Data Service (IDS); and (3) the High Resolution Service (HRS). The DDS provides North American surface airways observations, ship and buoy reports, rawinsonde data and manually digitized radar reports all of which are used in the initialization procedure that provides a three-dimensional dataset to begin the mesoscale simulation. The IDS provides DDS-type information for the remainder of the world. This theoretically permits a simulation to be run anywhere on the globe, although the data density and quality is far from uniform throughout the world. The HRS provides initialization analyses and forecast model output from the NCEP and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) operational models. This data is used as a first guess for the mesoscale model initialization procedure and as time-dependent lateral boundary conditions during the model simulation.

Real-time mesoscale numerical simulations using a grid spacing between 10 and 40 km are executed on either a DEC Alpha AXP model 255/233 or 255/300 computer system. The simulation model is MESO's Mesoscale Atmospheric Simulation System (MASS) model. The simulation sequence is triggered automatically each day by the workstation's UNIX operating system. The sequence begins by assembling all of the current real-time data on the operational workstation. Once all of the data is resident on the workstation, the execution of the MASS data preprocessor is initiated to create a three-dimensional initialization dataset for the MASS simulation model. The data preprocessor utilizes the real-time atmospheric data as well as data describing the distribution of static or slowly changing properties of the earth's surface such as terrain elevation, land and water distribution, land use and vegetative density which are stored in a "static archive" on a second disk drive. Once the initialization dataset is ready, the atmospheric model is immediately executed. After the execution of the numerical simulation model, a series of product-generation programs are executed to extract data for specific sites from the three-dimensional model output and construct a customized product for particular applications. The system is currently generating a variety of text and graphical products which are being automatically disseminated to users on a daily basis via an email or fax transmission. More information about Eweather products and services can be obtained by sending an email request to info@meso.com.

Examples of Real-time MASS output

NEW! MESO Real Time MM5 Output for Eastern U.S. - 45 and 15 Km Resolution

More about MESO,Inc.: Numerical Weather Prediction

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