Editor's Note:
NDFD Customers?

Is your office reaching out to a variety of customers and showing them the benefits of the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD)? Are you finding customers who are coming up with unique uses of NDFD information, or are you reaching out to non-traditional customers? Tell us your NDFD outreach success stories and we'll compile them for readers in an upcoming issue of NWS.Focus. E-mail us at NWS.Focus@noaa.gov.

NWS Deputy Director Explains Emergency Response Role for Save A Life Foundation
By Patrick Slattery
Public Affairs Specialist
NWS Central Region Headquarters

Noting the "natural good fit" of NOAA with the Save A Life Foundation in times of need, NWS Deputy Director John Jones recently described the agency's role in disaster mitigation to this organization's National Emergency Preparedness Summit in Chicago, IL, on September 16, 2003.

"We are your partners in preparedness," Jones told the audience of teachers, emergency responders, and emergency managers. "Our goal is to provide you with products and services that help your communities keep emergencies from becoming disasters."

Jones noted that the NOAA National Weather Service and the Save A Life Foundation, working closely with the national Citizen Corps, form a good fit in the partnership of keeping the public safe (NOAA became a Citizen Corps co-partner in July). He pointed out that NOAA satellites carry equipment to assist with search and rescue operations; NOAA ship sonar for charting the ocean bottom also helps find downed aircraft like that of JFK, Jr., and TWA flight 800; and, NOAA Weather Radio is now used to carry civil emergency information, including post-disaster information. He also detailed how NOAA aircraft flew missions over the World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001, attacks to produce three-dimensional images that helped recovery and clean up efforts.

Jones said public awareness campaigns such as Severe Weather Awareness Week, Lightning Safety Awareness Week, Turn Around Don't Drown, and StormReady have been valuable in making the public aware of self-protective actions needed during emergency situations. Forecast and communications tools such as the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, the National Digital Forecast Database, NOAA Weather Radio, and the Emergency Managers Weather Information Network (EMWIN), he said, enable NOAA Weather Service experts to provide the latest information to emergency managers, the media, and the public.

Beyond Predictions: Toward a Full-Service Environmental Agency
By Gregory A. Mandt
Director, Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services

The following article is reprinted from the Summer AWARE Report.

NOAA's Strategic Plan, "New Priorities for the 21st Century" is out. The plan includes four mission goals:

• Protect, restore, and manage the use of coastal and ocean resources through ecosystem-based management
• Understand climate variability and change to enhance society's ability to plan and respond
• Serve society's needs for weather and water information
• Support the Nation's commerce with information for safe, efficient, and environmentally sound transportation.

We in the National Weather Service should take pride in the fact that our efforts support all four mission goals. What we do ties into everything NOAA does. Given the new NOAA Strategic Plan, what does the future hold for the Weather Service? Ants Leetmaa, from NOAA's Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, NJ, gave us a glimpse of our future challenges. At a briefing to the NWS Corporate Board, Leetmaa noted the following: Global population will increase to 9 billion by 2050. About 4 billion people will live in mega cities with aging populations.

Food needs will require sustainable increases in food output per hectare of 300 percent. Humans have appropriated 50 percent of the Earth's primary productivity. We have doubled the global cycling of nitrogen and impacted the carbon cycle. As society becomes more complex, we will become more sensitive to both natural- and human-induced variability. This implies that we in NOAA and the NWS must look to how we can live in harmony with our environment while improving our nation's health, ecology, and economy. NWS observations and predictions can enable us to remain good environmental stewards. We in the NWS must understand how our data and information can be used by other NOAA components and our environmental partners to make sound decisions. Similarly, we must increase our knowledge of other NOAA services so we can help our customers and partners better use NOAA capabilities.

Engage, advise, and inform is one of the NOAA strategies to help us meet NOAA's four mission goals. The necessity to engage, advise, and inform takes us beyond predictions. We are expected to engage our customers and outline the capabilities both we and NOAA can bring to bear to solve increasingly complex environmental issues. It's a big job. And, it's going to get bigger. Engage, advise, and inform is everyone's responsibility. Our future as a Nation, our quality of life, and our legacy for generations are riding on the decisions society makes today. Let's use our capabilities to ensure our Nation makes the right choices.

Temperature Forecasting and Cooperative Modernization Demonstrations Are Heating Up

A NOAA effort to improve temperature forecasting in the northeastern United States could give the energy industry better information for predicting energy demand in the summer months. This effort includes improved high-resolution weather prediction models and new observations to improve the accuracy of those models and better understand regional and local weather phenomena that strongly influence summer energy demand. Eighty COOP stations are partially modernized as part of a 200-station, Congressionally-funded high-resolution temperature forecasting demonstration project in the New England area. The NWS is preparing to acquire equipment to modernize additional cooperative observer (COOP) stations. The NWS will be contracting for the additional stations in September 2003, according to Daniel Meléndez, meteorologist with the NWS Office of Science and Technology. He added that installation of beta test sites is planned for late fall 2004 with installation of fully modernized COOP stations to begin in spring 2004. The experiment also includes special, upward-pointing radars, Meléndez said. "These wind profiling radars provide measurements of the wind from the ground up to roughly 10,000 feet. Knowledge of low-level wind patterns is essential for accurate regional forecasts."

Meléndez said the prediction models used experimentally for the project are able to capture weather features as small as tens of miles across and take detailed account of the New England topography and the coastal zone, both of which influence the weather strongly. Data from different models provide not only the most likely forecast but also give the range of possible weather conditions for the next day or so. Data and forecasts resulting from the New England project are available on the web at http://highrestemp.noaa.gov/.

Partners involved in the project include: NOAA's Forecast Systems, Environmental Technology, and National Severe Storms Laboratories, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, and NWS Weather Forecast Offices in the Northeast United States.

NCEP Director Takes Questions at White House Online Forum

National Centers for Environmental Prediction Director Louis Uccellini was the guest for an online question and answer forum called Ask the White House last week.

As Hurricane Isabel was nearing the Atlantic coast, Uccellini took questions on hurricanes and forecasting. Read the transcript here.

Joint NOAA Project Underway to Rescue International Hydrometeorological Records

Critical, historic, hydrometeorological records are being lost every day to mold, mildew, rodents, and rot in developing countries. The NWS and NESDIS have formed a partnership to rescue some of the world's most vulnerable hydrometeorological data. Since early 2000, this partnership has rescued about 200,000 upper air observations by getting them stored on CD-ROMs in a digital format.

"These paper records of past weather and climate are vital to the sciences of meteorology, hydrology and climatology," said NWS Project Manager Richard Crouthamel, NWS International Affairs. "They provide baselines for our global climate models helping to improve the accuracy of long-range forecasts. They give evidence of climate change to engineers, agriculturalists, and military planners on extreme environmental values they must anticipate."

The NOAA project teams for the "Africa Upper-Air Data Rescue Project" find, rescue, and transfer paper observational records to digital format. NOAA teams have traveled to six African countries (Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal and Zambia) to help the National Meteorological Services (NMS) of these countries prepare historic upper-air records for rescue using personal computers and digital cameras to preserve the entire original, paper-based observations (some complete with coffee stains) forever.

Crouthamel notes that once a CD-ROM is filled with observation photos of the paper documents, a copy is sent to NOAA's World Data Center, part of the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, NC. When the CDs arrive, the observation images are checked for legibility and stored for later digitization. Once this process is completed, the data will be added to the NCDC data base for access by the world community.

"We have rescued a lot of upper-air observations, however over 20,000,000 surface observations remain at risk in those six countries alone," reports Claudia Liautaud, Assistant Project Manager for Data Rescue, NWS International Affairs. "Can you imagine how many are at risk worldwide?"

Participating African NMS Directors continue to praise the NWS and NESDIS for their efforts, according to Crouthamel. Once the data becomes a part of the NCDC data base, all sorts of applications from research to improving operational forecasts can be derived from this massive undertaking. He added that the tragedy of losing data occurs all over the world. "It is important to save this vital information for the health, safety, and well being of every living thing on our planet. These records are vital to the sciences of meteorology, hydrology, and climatology."

Forecast Office Promoting Lightning Safety in High School Athletic Programs

As part of NOAA's educational efforts to promote lightning safety, the Gray, ME, Weather Forecast Office (WFO) has developed and is distributing a "Coach's and Sports Official's Guide to Lightning Safety" to high school athletic directors throughout Maine and New Hampshire.

Warning Coordination Meteorologist John Jensenius said the office's goal is to get this important safety information to each outdoor high school coach in the two states.

Each of the 100 school districts in New Hampshire and 150 school districts in Maine will receive a packet of 25 tri-fold brochures. In New Hampshire, the brochures were distributed September 15, 2003, at the state meeting of high school athletic directors. In Maine, the brochures will be distributed at a similar meeting in April. In addition to the brochures, the WFO will give each high school athletic director a copy of NOAA's most recent "Lightning Kills, Play It Safe" poster. WFO Gray also plans to provide lightning safety brochures and posters to other sports groups during the next several months.