CIMMS’ Dale Morris and Alex Zwink, associates with NOAA’s Warning Decision Training Division, traveled to Boulder, Fort Collins, and Kansas City this month as part of a collaboration with two other NOAA Cooperative Institutes.
One of the primary goals of the trip was to install WES-2 Bridge at Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), Forecast Decision Training Division (FDTD), Operations Proving Ground (OPG), and National Weather Service Training Center (NWSTC). The WES-2 Bridge is a Weather Event Simulator for AWIPS-2, the next-generation upgrade to the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) in NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS). Installation of WES-2 supports GOES-R training development in preparation for the launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R in early November.
Future GOES-R workshops for NWS Science & Operations Officers will be held in Kansas City. In the meantime, CIRA will be working on several case studies and has requested a way to visualize archived data (including new, simulated GOES-R data) in AWIPS, matching what the forecaster will see. The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) in Wisconsin has expressed a similar need.
WES-2 Bridge will be a critical component for at least some of the GOES-R training in preparation for launch this fall and will remain significant afterward. This has presented a unique opportunity for cross-collaboration between different NOAA CI's, and CIMMS is proud to be actively involved.