The month of January was extremely busy for the National Weather Services' NCEP Central Operations, according to Chief of Systems Integration Michelle Mainelli. Activities included finalizing the first version of the AWIPS II software, preparing AWIPS II workstations for demonstration at the American Meteorological Society meeting in Seattle, and finalizing the configuration of the AWIPS II test bed located at the World Weather Building in Camp Springs, MD.
"On January 12th, we submitted our AWIPS II baseline NCEP Perspective to the NWS Office of Science and Technology," says Mainelli. "We expect to see the NAWIPS migrated functionality in the AWIPS II release from Raytheon Technical Services by the end of March 2011. NCEP will continue to provide software updates to Unidata until that time."
During the AMS conference, Mainelli and NCEP's Scott Jacobs provided demonstrations of AWIPS II focusing on the NCEP Perspective at the Raytheon booth in the exhibition hall. "On the opening of the exhibit, we had the opportunity to showcase the AWIPS II NCEP functionality to Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA Administrator, and Ms. Mary Glackin, Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere," says Mainelli. "The demos provided a great exchange with conference participants and emphasized the joint development and migration work taking place between the National Weather Service and Raytheon."
Michael James of the Unidata Program Center was on hand at Unidata's booth in the AMS exhibition hall to provide demonstrations of the AWIPS II functionality as well.
Despite physical problems including power outages and water main breaks near the World Weather Building, Mainelli expects the AWIPS II Forecaster Integration Testing to begin the first week of February 2011, as planned. Forecaster Integration Testing will continue through the summer of 2011.
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Prototype of Unidata's AWIPS II package available at the AMS 2011 Annual Meeting | January 23-27 2011 |
| NCEP Field testing | Summer 2011 |
| NCEP Deployment of AWIPS II systems to National Centers | Fall 2011 |
| Release of AWIPS II package to Unidata community members | Winter 2011/2012 |
| Unidata will provide active support and maintenance of GEMPAK for 18 months after the release of AWIPS II to the Unidata community. After the 18-month active support period ends, Unidata will continue to make the GEMPAK source code, help and training materials, and the GEMBUD mailing list available. | |
