• CISL Spotlight

    TIGGE featured in EOS


    Click to enlarge.An example of TIGGE data showing an ongoing/recent event is hurricane Gustav in the Gulf of Mexico. Tropical storm Hanna can be seen entering the Caribbean as well.
    The TIGGE project, short for The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment (THORPEX) Interactive Grand Global Ensemble, is an international and collaborative effort to improve weather prediction and models.
    Click image, above to view this Quicktime animation; or download the AVI format. An animation of the TIGGE data showing hurricane Gustav in the Gulf of Mexico.     The project is currently featured in EOS, the weekly publication of the American Geophysical Union.

    NCAR has developed a system to dynamically handle the constant flow of information from 10 international weather prediction data providers and make them available from the NCAR TIGGE portal (http://tigge.ucar.edu). NCAR is one of three TIGGE data archive and distribution centers, along with the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

    The TIGGE task is daunting. NCAR receives over 240 gigabytes of data in the form of 1.6 million global gridded meteorological data fields every day from data providers.  That is over 88 terabytes annually.  Scientists can use one of several available interfaces to access this vast data resource for research: through one, a user can browse the archive and select forecast files for download; through another, they are free to select individual parameters, spatial subsets from the global domain, and user-specified grid resolution across multiple centers.  To enhance access, the TIGGE portal also points users to various tools for analyzing the data, a Web forum to share ideas and questions with fellow users, and the option to select an output data format when having a subset prepared by the system.

    On the web

    THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble, NCAR's TIGGE Data Archive Portal
    CISL's Research Data Archive
    AGU's Supplementary material to "Improving High-Impact Weather Forecasts"
    The Full-text AGU article is available to subscribers.