IN43C-01
The AISRP Code and Algorithm Library
Sophisticated analysis, data mining, and visualization tools have become an integral part of modern research programs. Their importance will only grow as the data volume from future missions and programs increases, in some cases by many orders of magnitude. Individual investigators are rarely in a position to develop all the analysis tools they require. They may not have the necessary resources in software, manpower, and time, or even have access to the relevant analysis techniques. At the same time, analysis tools have increasingly become a 'result' in their own right, on a par with the research they were developed to support. One way to address these issues is through the distribution and sharing of research software. To this end, NASA's Applied Information Systems Research Program has begun development of the AISRP Code and Algorithm Library for use by the general scientific community. It is intended to serve as a public library, archive, and distribution center for code, algorithm descriptions, software packages, and associated literature and documentation. It can also be used as a distribution center for small sample data sets for the evaluation, demonstration, comparison, and test of different analysis code. The development version of this facility is now available for public use. We will discuss our experience with this facility along with its capabilities and possible development paths.
<a href='http://astrophysics.arc.nasa.gov/AISRPCodeLibraryServer'>http://astrophysics.arc.nasa.gov/AISRPCode LibraryServer</a>
IN43C-02
MAGDA and MAGNATE: Secure Web-Based Data Distribution and Visualization for the Cassini Magnetometer
The measurements of Saturn's magnetic field acquired by the Cassini magnetometer (MAG) to date have provided the basis of numerous pioneering scientific studies of the planet's magnetic and plasma environs. MAG data is essential for, among other applications, understanding the nature of the particle distributions observed by the plasma instruments onboard Cassini. In order to facilitate interaction and collaboration between instrument teams, we have developed a multi-layered suite of software to provide an intuitive interface for accessing, visualizing and analysing MAG data from the Cassini spacecraft. In this presentation, we describe architecture and capabilities of the MAG software systems, and how they promote collaboration between subscribing Cassini scientists and other users. The 'layered' approach of this software model comproses the following components: (i) MAGDA - A web-based system for locating, retrieving and preliminary visualization of magnetometer (MAG) data, which requires no proprietary client software; (ii) MAGNATE - A package of Matlab routines which allows users to perform more detailed analyses and more 'customised' visualization of datasets which they have retrieved using MAGDA. (iii) Data-Handling Libraries - For advanced users who may wish to integrate MAG data-handling with their own applications, we provide a set of Java classes for this purpose (which are platform-independent). The systems described are implemented using industry-standard languages and protocols in order to make them accessible by the widest possible user community.
IN43C-03
The Usage of TRMM and GPI Data to Investigate Temporal and Spatial Distribution of Rainfall in South America
This work uses the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) products and the Geostationary Environmental Satellite (GOES) Precipitation Index (GPI) estimates to investigate the temporal and spatial distribution of precipitation over inaccessible regions of the South America not covered by dense gauge network. The intercomparison of these products over tropical South America reveals that the spatial distribution, the diurnal cycle, and the nature of rainfall vary from one subregion to another. For instance, while a large number of rainfall systems are accounted over Amazonia, the largest number of strong Mesoscale Convective Systems (MCSs) occurs over the extratropics of South America and in the western region of Colombia and Gulf of Panama. Even within the subregions of Amazonia, spatial differences in the distribution of rainfall is noted, which is showed to be related to the nature of rainfall in these different subregions. For example, in the coastal areas of Amapá State, which is believed to have one of the largest records of rainfall in Brazil, the total annual rainfall by GPI is not as large as in the Marajó Island. Comparisons among GPI and TRMM products with some gauge stations indicate that in rainfall is more convective over Marajó subregion than over Amapá State. The diurnal cycle of the rainfall was also shown to vary significantly among the subregions in South America due to different physiographical and meteorological characteristics.
IN43C-04
Real Time Data in Synoptic Meteolorolgy and Weather Forecasting Education
The Department of Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences (DAOS) of the University of Buenos Aires is the university component of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Regional Meteorological Training Center (RMTC) in Region III. In January, 2002 our RMTC was invited to take part in the MeteoForum pilot project that was developed jointly by the COMET and Unidata programs of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). MeteoForum comprises an international network of WMO Region III and IV RMTCs working collaboratively with universities to enhance their roles of training and education through information technologies and multilingual collections of resources. The DAOS undertook to improve its infrastructure to be able to access hydro-meteorological information in real-time as part of the Unidata community. In 2003, the DAOS received some Unidata equipment grant funds to update its computer infrastructure, improving communications with an operationally quicker system. Departmental networking was upgraded to 100 Mb/s capability while, at the same time, new computation resources were purchased that increased the number of computers available for student use from 5 to 8. This upgrade has also resulted in more and better computers being available for student and faculty research. A video projection system, purchased with funds provided by the COMET program as part of Meteoforum, is used in classrooms with Internet connections for a variety of educational activities. The upgraded computing and networking facilities have contributed to the development of educational modules using real-time hydro-meteorological and other digital data for the classroom. With the aid of Unidata personal, the Unidata Local Data Management (LDM) software was installed and configured to request and process real-time feeds of global observational data; global numerical model output from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) models; and all imager channels from GOES-12 from the Unidata Internet Data Distribution (IDD) system. The data now being routinely received have impacted not only the meteorological education in the DAOS, but also have been instructive in techniques for Internet-based data sharing for our students. The DAOS has made a substantial effort to provide undergraduate students with experience in manipulating, displaying, and analyzing weather data in real-time through interactive displays of data using visualization tools provided by Unidata. Two of the specific courses whose curriculum have been improved are synoptic meteorology and a laboratory on weather prediction. Some laboratory materials have been developed to reflect current data as applied to the lecture material. This talk will briefly describe the data compiled and the fields used to analyze an intense cyclogenesis event that occurred over the La Plata River in August, 2005. This event was used as a case study for discussions in the Synoptic Weather Laboratory degree course of Atmospheric Sciences Licentiate.
IN43C-05
International Collaboration and Capacity Building at the Federal University of Para, Brazil: the Geo-science Cyberinfrastructure Journey
For over three decades, the Federal University of Para (UFPA) has been committed to building faculty and student capacity through national and international collaboration. Since the early 1980s, the Meteorology Department has actively participated in a large number of international scientific experiments in the Amazon region. One difficulty in the continuation of research after the field phase was data sharing and processing, which relied on physical media. The researcher had to travel to the data processing centers, such as the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE), University of Sao Paulo (USP), and University of Wisconsin Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) to process and analyze data. In the early 1990s, UFPA purchased the McIDAS-OS2 software package and had faculty trained at SSEC, but difficulties with data transfer and funds for upgrading the equipment and maintaining the McIDAS membership led to the failure of the project. With the advent of the Internet and freely available tools for data transfer, analysis and display, UFPA once again became a part of the broader geo-science information community. With the recently installed Unidata Internet Data Distribution (IDD) at UFPA, archived and real-time data are now readily available for research and teaching.
IN43C-06
Data Democratization - Promoting Real-Time Data Sharing and Use throughout the Americas
The Unidata Program Center (Unidata) of the University Corporation of Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is actively involved in international collaborations whose goals are real-time sharing of hydro-meteorological data by institutions of higher education throughout the Americas; in the distribution of analysis and visualization tools for those data; and in the establishment of server sites that provide easy-to-use, programmatic remote- access to a wide variety of datasets. Data sharing capabilities are being provided by Unidata's Internet Data Distribution (IDD) system, a community-based effort that has been the primary source of real-time meteorological data for approximately 150 US universities for over a decade. A collaboration among Unidata, Brazil's Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC), the Universidad Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and the Universidade de São Paulo (USP) has resulted in the creation of a Brazilian peer of the North American IDD, the IDD-Brasil. Collaboration among Unidata, the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez (UPRM) seeks to extend IDD data sharing throughout Central America and the Caribbean in an IDD-Caribe. Collaboration between Unidata and the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Regional Meteorological Training Center (RMTC) based in Barbados, has been launched to investigate the possibility of expansion of IDD data sharing throughout Caribbean RMTC member countries. Most recently, efforts aimed at creating a data sharing network for researchers on the Antarctic continent have resulted in the establishment of the Antarctic-IDD. Data analysis and visualization capabilities are being provided by Unidata through a suite of freely-available applications: the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) GEneral Meteorology PAcKage (GEMPAK); the Unidata Integrated Data Viewer (IDV); and University of Wisconsin, Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) Man-computer Interactive Data Access System (McIDAS). Remote data access capabilities are provided by Unidata's Thematic Realtime Environmental Data Services (THREDDS) servers (which incorporate Open-source Project for a Network Data Access (OPeNDAP) data services), and the Abstract Data Distribution Environment (ADDE) of McIDAS. It is envisioned that the data sharing capabilities available in the IDD, IDD-Brasil, and IDD-Caribe, remote data access capabilities available in THREDDS and ADDE, and analysis capabilities available in GEMPAK, the IDV, and McIDAS will help foster new collaborations among prominent university educators and researchers, national meteorological agencies, and WMO Regional Meteorological Training Centers throughout North, Central, and South America.
IN43C-07
Promoting Scientific Collaboration in South America through IDD-Brazil
The IDD-Brazil constitutes of an expansion of the Unidata Internet Data Distribution (IDD), a joint effort among the Laboratório de Prognósticos em Mesoescala - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (LPM/UFRJ), Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC, a division of INPE) and the Unidata Program Center, linking several Brazilian and South American Institutions in a network for near-real time data sharing. This international cooperation is modifying drastically the way that researchers use data, providing access to broaden and more detailed information, available freely for the participants of this network. Data-sharing is one of the biggest issues in Brazil, and the solutions developed at Unidata Program Center enhances not only data access and management, but also the display and analysis of a variety of datasets. Using the Local Data Manager (LDM), a site can both receive and send data trough the IDD network, on a client-server architecture. Moreover, this system also provides a seamless integration with many decoders, following WMO standards for a large array of data, ranging from METAR messages to GRIB. Using this network as a new path to deliver and acquire observational data, IDD-Brazil participants are now capable of receiving observational data not only from GTS (Global Telecommunication System), but also from CPTECs PCD (automatic stations) network and the entire array of METAR and SYNOP observations, in a near-real time basis. This network is capable of addressing a gap in data sharing, since it has no cost for educational and research purposes. The UFRJ has been working closely with CPTEC and Unidata, porting new datasets to this system, such as the output from CPTEC's ETA 40km regional model, local acquired Satellite Imagery from GOES, and LPM's MM5 and WRF 20km mesoscale models. The IDD-Brazil is creating a new cooperation among several institutions that traditionally face the same issues, but never had a link to a community. The new challenge faced is the dissemination of this knowledge, a key factor to increase the number of participants. In order to facilitate the dialogue among these institutions, training sessions are planned to occur, and also the involvement in key events - such as the Brazilian Meteorology Meeting an the 8th International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography. Any University or Research Center can, and its encouraged to, share its data with other IDD participants. Constant outreach efforts driven by Unidata, UFRJ and CPTEC are increasing the number of participants in IDD-Brazil, setting new paths for research, empowering Meteorology nationwide, and creating new collaborations throughout the Americas.
IN43C-08
Geodynamical model of oil-gas and mineral deposits using RS\&GIS Western Uzbekistan
This paper deals with the application of complex study of Remote Sensing images and deep Lithospheric structures to the knowledge of spatial interrelation between regional lineaments and oil-gas and mineral deposits in Uzbekistan. Deciphering of structural units of Uzbekistan territory using space ASTER images allows us to reveal regional, deeprooted lineament, extending in latitudinal direction over Uzbekistan territory and neighboring countries. Thus lineament could penetrate the Earth up to deep Lithosphere layers, inheriting a position of old fault-lineament systems which origin related to Paleocene tectonic processes. The most extended latitudinal lineament is the "Transregional lineament of Central Asia" located within 42-44N zone. It stretches for more than 2000km from Sultan-Uvais mountains (Karakalpakstan), through Kyzylkums and Nurata mountains (Uzbekistan), Turkestan-Alay and Atbashi-Inychek mountains (Kyrgyzstan), to Chinese border with possible extension along the Chinese Tien-Shan. The main objective is to associate the surface «indicators» as geological, geophysical and tectonic base of data using RS\&GIS with the purpose toidentify the occurrence special geoobjects of economic interest. Additionally, it will be possible to evaluate geospatial distributions of these altered zones related to morphological structures using Digital Elevation Modelling/DEM/ products of ASTER images. RS\&GIS methods were used to determine the interrelations of the volcanic and granitic rocks distribution-mineralization-alteration with the faults-lineaments, circular structures. The alteration zones, the tectonic lines and the Circular structures related to the cones and calderas determined these methods and checked by group truth studies may be target areas to explore for some new oil-gas and ore deposits. As a result, our investigations envelops more then 10 deposits in Western Uzbekistan.In conclusion, it is necessary to note that such structures are well-known in the American, Australian continents. They are recognizes as deep structures and served as channels fo the heat (endogenous) energy, magmas and fluids to come out of the core and mantle of the Earth. It gives us an opportunity to concentrate there our efforts for prospecting of such kind oil-gas and mineral deposits.