IBM Research

Deep Thunder Current NAM Forecast for North America The image below represents a small subset of the type of visualized forecasts that can be produced by adapting the Deep Thunder techniques to the North American Model (NAM) developed and operated by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP).  Currently, this model covers overs all of North America and surrounding oceans at 12 km resolution.   Only a subset of the results of each model execution (four times per day) are made available courtesy of the National Weather Service via their NOAAport data transmission system.   The NOAAport system used for this project was developed by Planetary Data, Inc.   Currently, the subset data that are available are resampled from the original 12-km-resolution grid to another at 12 km, but on a different map projection covering a smaller area, focused on the continental United States, interpolated from 60 vertical levels to 30 isobaric levels, and then sampled every three hours in time. Description These images and animation are a visualization of the current Eta synoptic scale model.   Each time step corresponds to three hours of forecast time.  The visualization shows a three-dimensional scene in vertical pressure coordinates in a Lambert Conformal projection covering North America.  Several variables are shown.  Near the top there is a translucent orange surface, which is an isosurface of horizontal wind speed at 40 m/sec.  Its shape and movement is indicative of the jet stream.  Closer to the bottom are white translucent surfaces representing "clouds" as an isosurface of relative humidity at 99%.  At the bottom is a colored surface, whose height corresponds to the forecasted surface pressure.  The coloring are contour bands of surface temperature using the legend at the lower left.  The surface is overlaid with a map of political boundaries and coastlines in black. Instructions By clicking and dragging your mouse inside the top image you can interact with the visualization in a three-dimensional sense.  Below that you can see a similar visualization as an animation of a set of individual JPEG images with three hours of forecast time between each frame.  Depending on your connection speed and that of your computer, the animation may take a few minutes to load and decompress in your browser.  When it is completed, the animation will play.  There are VCR-like controls under the animation to enable you to stop playback, play forward or backward, or step through the frames one at a time, control the speed of playback, etc.  If you are having problems viewing or interacting with this animation, make sure your browser has Javascript enabled. If the forecast information presented on this page does not seem to be current and you have visited this site recently, the results of the previous visit may have been saved in your web browser's cache. If so, you should change your cache settings (e.g., File->Preferences->Advanced->Cache in Netscape and set the document comparison to "Every time"). When you restart your browser, the problem should be solved. For your current session, you should manually clear the cache and reload the page. Learn More about Deep Thunder   Learn More about how Deep Thunder Visualizes the Data Generated by the Weather Model   Current Weather Information and Predictions for Washington and Baltimore (from the National Weather Service)