RE: Tony Hansen request for assistance

• To: "Hansen, Anthony R. " <arhansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: RE: Tony Hansen request for assistance
• From: Robb Kambic <rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 12:56:38 -0600 (MDT)

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Hansen, Anthony R.  wrote:

Robb;
        Thanks for the information about THREDDS and the examples you
included in your e-mail.  I think we can use this to get most of what we
need from the MetarServer.  The exact syntax of the response doesn't
really matter and I think we can parse the XML code as easily as
anything else.  If we have any questions, I'll be in touch.  One

Tony,

Glad you can use this service.

additional question is, can we access the co-ordinate data on the
positions of fronts that HPC puts out through THREDDS also?  We need to
acquire frontal position data from somewhere for our forecast exercise
and it would be convenient to be able to get that through your
web-services also.

At this time THREDDS doesn't have frontal position data on a server, but
it's in the planning stages. It could be finished by the fall but I can't
make any promises.

Robb..

        Thanks for your attention to this, and we'll keep

you posted on

how our project is proceeding.  Our goal is to have it ready for the
coming fall semester.

Tony

===========================================
Tony Hansen
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
St. Cloud State University
720 Fourth Avenue South
St. Cloud, MN  56301

Phone:  320-255-2009
Fax:      320-255-4262

===========================================



-----Original Message-----
From: Robb Kambic [mailto:rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 2:39 PM
To: Hansen, Anthony R.
Cc: John Caron; Ben Domenico
Subject: Tony Hansen request for assistance


Tony,

I don't if anyone from Unidata contacted you, so I'll respond to your
question that was sent to the User's committee. My response will only
deal with the data acquisition part of the question.

At this time Unidata has the THREDDS project that's making dataset
services available via web-services. Since THREDDS project is still in
the development stages, not very many services are available. But, there
is a Metar server that you might be interested in investigating.

From your letter sent to the User committee, you mentioned a request in
the
format:

<forecast>
        <site>KSTC</site>
        <date>04/02/03</date>
</forecast>

and a response of:

<forecast-result>
        <site>KSTC</site>
        <date>04/02/03</date>
        <temp tim=12Z>34</temp>
        ....
</forecast-result>

At this time we don't have anything to satisfy the above syntax, but the
Metar Server will take a URL and return an XML representation of the
data in a general format of

 <parameter name="time" value="221753Z" /> for the Metar report
parameters.

Using the URL:

http://motherlode.ucar.edu:8080/thredds/cgi-bin/MetarServer.pl?format=xm
l&stn=KSTC&time=latest

will return:

<station name="KSTC">
    <parameter name="report" value="KSTC 301753Z AUTO 28018G24KT 10SM
OVC029 17/12 A2943 " />
    <parameter name="time" value="301753Z" />
    <parameter name="DIR" value="280" />
    <parameter name="SPD" value="18KT" />
    <parameter name="GUST" value="24" />
    <parameter name="prevail_VIS_SM" value="10" />
    <parameter name="cloud_type" value="OVC" />
    <parameter name="cloud_hgt" value="2900" />
    <parameter name="cloud_meters" value="870" />
    <parameter name="T" value="17" />
    <parameter name="TD" value="12" />
    <parameter name="inches_ALTIM" value="29.43" />
</station>

The return is well-formed and valid XML that can be sent to any XML
parser for data extraction.

If you are interested in using the Metar Server, documentation is
available. Actually there are many parameters that are configurable to
closer satisfy your requirements.

For documentation, look at this url near the bottom of the page, "Metar
server on motherlode.ucar.edu"

http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/threddsData.html


For Denver's KDEN report:

http://motherlode.ucar.edu:8080/thredds/cgi-bin/MetarServer.pl?format=xm
l&
stn=KDEN&time=latest

<station name="KDEN">
    <parameter name="report" value="KDEN 221753Z 06009KT 10SM CLR 23/07
A3016 " />
    <parameter name="time" value="221753Z" />
    <parameter name="DIR" value="060" />
    <parameter name="SPD" value="09KT" />
    <parameter name="GUST" value="0" />
    <parameter name="prevail_VIS_SM" value="10" />
    <parameter name="cloud_type" value="CLR" />
    <parameter name="T" value="23" />
    <parameter name="TD" value="07" />
    <parameter name="inches_ALTIM" value="30.16" />
</station>

Hopefully this will be helpful to you,
Robb...

==============================================================================
Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
rkambic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                   WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
==============================================================================