Pilots are generally pretty savvy about the weather. We can decode METARs and TAFs, get satellite weather pictures, and understand NEXRAD radar images. Most of us even remember how to read winds aloft, constant pressure analysis, and composite moisture stability charts. You remember what a K-index is, right?
We all know that forecasting the weather is not an easy thing to do. You have to predict the movement of trillions of air molecules influenced by more than enough variables to make your head spin. Short-lived atmospheric events are difficult to study because no one can predict precisely where they'll occur next. If you try to study them when they pop up, they're often gone before you get there. And large climate models are so complex they challenge the fastest supercomputers.
But scientists aren't giving up. In fact, they're making great progress. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., is a federally funded research and development center tasked with studying the weather. It is the place where government agencies and universities turn when they need facilities, equipment, aircraft, supercomputers, and scientists to conduct weather and climate research.
Timely weather information and specialized forecasting tools are in great demand. Government clients for NCAR include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Departments of Defense, Energy, Commerce and Agriculture to name just a few. Whether you're launching a satellite, forecasting next year's soybean crop or planning an amphibious assault, you want to predict the weather as accurately as possible.
The FAA, through its Aviation Weather Research Program, uses NCAR services, too. The NCAR laboratory that does most of the work for the FAA is the Research Applications Laboratory (RAL), which aims to improve the timeliness, accuracy and presentation of aviation weather information to better warn of atmospheric hazards.
If science is to be truly useful to society, there must be a strong connection between scientific work and the needs of the end users. RAL's work doesn't just get published in some obscure weather journal that only scientists read. End-user requirements are considered at each step as projects evolve. RAL works closely with pilots and aircraft operators to learn what weather issues create the biggest problems, then it develops tools to help actually deal with them. Since RAL's foundation, most of its work has been heavily oriented towards real-time, operational systems.
AVweb
For those that don't know ADDS.
We all know that forecasting the weather is not an easy thing to do. You have to predict the movement of trillions of air molecules influenced by more than enough variables to make your head spin. Short-lived atmospheric events are difficult to study because no one can predict precisely where they'll occur next. If you try to study them when they pop up, they're often gone before you get there. And large climate models are so complex they challenge the fastest supercomputers.
But scientists aren't giving up. In fact, they're making great progress. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., is a federally funded research and development center tasked with studying the weather. It is the place where government agencies and universities turn when they need facilities, equipment, aircraft, supercomputers, and scientists to conduct weather and climate research.
Timely weather information and specialized forecasting tools are in great demand. Government clients for NCAR include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Departments of Defense, Energy, Commerce and Agriculture to name just a few. Whether you're launching a satellite, forecasting next year's soybean crop or planning an amphibious assault, you want to predict the weather as accurately as possible.
The FAA, through its Aviation Weather Research Program, uses NCAR services, too. The NCAR laboratory that does most of the work for the FAA is the Research Applications Laboratory (RAL), which aims to improve the timeliness, accuracy and presentation of aviation weather information to better warn of atmospheric hazards.
If science is to be truly useful to society, there must be a strong connection between scientific work and the needs of the end users. RAL's work doesn't just get published in some obscure weather journal that only scientists read. End-user requirements are considered at each step as projects evolve. RAL works closely with pilots and aircraft operators to learn what weather issues create the biggest problems, then it develops tools to help actually deal with them. Since RAL's foundation, most of its work has been heavily oriented towards real-time, operational systems.
AVweb
For those that don't know ADDS.
