Acronyms

A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z
A
AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science
ACADIS Advanced Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service
ACARS Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System.
AD Analog-to-Digital
ADAGUC Atmospheric Data Access for the Geospatial User Community
ADDE Abstract Data Distribution Environment. A McIDAS remote data access system.
ADaM Algorithm Development and Mining System
ADAS ARPS Data Analysis System
ADL Alexandria Digital Library
AGU American Geophysical Union
AIHEC American Indian Higher Education Consortium
AI/ML Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
AMDAR Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay
AMPS Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System
AMS American Meteorological Society
AOGCM Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model
AOI Automated Operator Interface
AON Arctic Observing Network
API Application Program Interface
APRDC Asia Pacific Data Research Center
ARL Air Resources Laboratory
Arc Hydro GIS suite of tools for creation, manipulation, and display of water resources within the ESRI ArcGIS environment.
ARM Atmospheric Radiation Measurement
ARPS Advanced Regional Prediction System
ASMET African Satellite Meteorology Education and Training
ASOS Automated Surface Observing System
ATCF Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting
ATM Division of Atmospheric Sciences, a division of the NSF
AVN Aviation Model at NCEP
AWC Aviation Weather Center
AWIPS Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System
AWIPS II Next generation of the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System software.
AWS AWS Convergence Technologies, Inc.
AWS Amazon Web Services
B
return to top
BADC The British Atmospheric Data Centre
BASC Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate
BEC Board on Enterprise Education
BDP NOAA Big Data Project
BGP Border Gateway Protocol
BMRC Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, Australia
BPEL4WS Business Process Execution Language for Web Services
BRAN Boulder Research and Administrative Network
BUFR Binary Universal Form for the Representation of Meteorological Data
C
return to top
CADIS Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service
CAIDIS Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis
CAPS Center for the Analysis and Prediction of Storms, University of Oklahoma
CARE The CARE data principles are Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics
CASA Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere
CAVE Common AWIPS Visualization Environment
CAVE Cave Automatic Virtual Environment
CD Compact disk
CDC Climate Diagnostics Center
CDF Common Data Form
CDI Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation Initiative
CDM Common Data Model
CDI Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation
CDP Community Data Portal
CEOP Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period
CF NetCDF Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Convention
CI Cyberinfrastructure
CIESIN Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network
CILSS Comité permanent inter-État de lutte contre la sécheresse au Sahel (Permanent Interstate Committee for drought control in the Sahel)
CISL Computation and Information Systems Laboratory at NCAR
CIMSS Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
CLASS Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System
CMA China Meteorological Administration
CMAS Community Modeling and Analysis System
CMC Canadian Meteorological Centre
CMIP3 Multi-model dataset used for the IPCC Fourth Assessment
CNR Italian National Research Council
COAMPS Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System
CODIAC Cooperative Distributed Interactive Atmospheric Catalogue
COLA Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere
COMET Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology Education and Training
CONDUIT Cooperative Opportunity for NCEP Data Using IDD Technology
CONUS Continental US
COSMIC Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate
CPTEC Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos
CRAFT Collaborative Radar Acquisition Field Test
CSMF Climate System Modeling Federation
CSS Cascading Style Sheets
CSWR Center for Severe Weather Research
CUAHSI Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrological Science, Inc.
CVS Concurrent Version System
CyRDAS Cyberinfrastructure for Research, Development and Education in the Atmospheric Sciences
D
return to top
DAML-S DAML Services, DAML-based Web Service Ontology
DAML DARPA Agent Markup Language
DAMOCLES Developing Arctic Modeling and Observing Capability for Long-term Environment Studies
DAP Data Access Protocol
DAP4 Data Access Protocol version 4
DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
DART Data Assimilation Research Testbed
DCP Data Collection Platform
DLESE Digital Library for Earth System Education
data feed To the Unidata LDM, a sequence of data products, all of the same feed type, injected into the IDD from a single data source.
DNG Downscaled Numerical Guidance
DOCTYPE Document Type
data product To the Unidata LDM, a unit of data with an associated feed type, product ID, injection time, origin, and sequence number.
DORADE DOppler RAdar Data Exchange Format
data source To the Unidata LDM, a remote provider of data products.
DUE Division of Undergraduate Education, NSF
data stream To the Unidata LDM, a sequence of bulletins all of the same feed type broadcast from a single data source. Once the bulletins are converted into data products, the result is called a data feed.
DDS Domestic Data Services
decoder To the Unidata LDM, a program that converts transmitted data products into a different form more suitable for use by applications. Decoders often combine multiple products into a single decoded file.
DIDAKT Data Integrated Documents and Knowledge Tools
DIF Directory Interchange Format
DIFAX Digital Facsimile (a data stream of digitized maps formerly provided by the NWS)
DIMES DIstributed MEtadata System from George Mason University
DL Digital Library
DMAC Data Management Analysis Center
DODS Distributed Oceanographic Data System, former name for the discipline-specific National Virtual Oceanographic Data System and the discipline-independent access protocols now known as OPeNDAP .
DQC Dataset Query Capabilities - THREDDS XML Document type that describes the possible ways that an end-user can choose dataset subsets.
DVB-S, DVB-S2 Digital Video Broadcasting by Satellite (First & Second Generations)
E
return to top
EarthCube EarthCube is a National Science Foundation initiative to create a data and knowledge management system for the 21st century.
EC2
(Amazon Web Service)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
ECMWF European Center for Medium range Weather Forecasting
EDEX AWIPS Environmental Data EXchange
EDR Environmental Data Record
EGU European Geosciences Union
EHR Education and Human Resources, a division of the NSF
EMC Environmental Modeling Center
ENSO El Nino Southern Oscillation
EOL Earth Observing Laboratory
EOS Earth Observing System
EPSC European Planetary Science Congress
EPSCoR Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research
ERDDAP Data server created by NOAA (not an acronym)
ERE Environmental Research and Education
ESG Earth System Grid
ESIG Environmental and Societal Impacts Group, former NCAR program
ESIIL Environmental Data Science Innovation and Inclusion Lab
ESIP Earth System Information Partners Federation
ESMF Earth System Modeling Facility
ESML Earth Science Markup Language
ESRI Environmental Systems Research Institute
ESRL Earth System Research Laboratory (formerly FSL)
ESS Earth Systems Science
ESSI Earth and Space Science Informatics
ESTOFS Extratropical Storm surge and Tide Operational Forecast System
EUMETSAT European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites
Exelis Visual Information Soutions Formerly ITTVIS. Makers of the IDL and ENVI software packages.
F
return to top
FACE Florida Area Cirrus Experiment
FAIR The FAIR data principles are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable
FES Fluid Earth Systems
FFRDC Federally Funded Research and Development Center
FGDC Federal Geographic Data Committee
FIM Flow-following finite-volume Icosahedral Model (global model)
FNMOC Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center
FOS Family of Services, a collection of data streams from NWS
FMRC Federation Mercury Search Engine
FSL Forecast Systems Laboratory NOAA.renamed Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL)
FTP File Transfer Protocol
G
return to top
GALEON Gateway or Geo-interface for Air Land Earth Ocean netCDF
GB Gigabyte
GCMD Global Change Master Directory
GDS GrADS/DODS Server
GEM Global Environmental Multiscale Model
GEMPAK General Meteorological Package
GEO Geosciences Directorate, division of the NSF
GEON The GEOsciences Network
GEON IDV The GEON Integrated Data Viewer is an extension of the Unidata IDV for exploration of complex three-dimensional data in geophysics.
GFS Global Forecast System
GEOSS Global Earth Observation System of Systems
GIS Geographic Information Systems
GINI GOES Ingest & NOAAPORT Interface
GLM Global Lightning Mapper (GOES-16+ satellite instrument)
GMAO Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (NASA)
GMES Global Monitoring for Environment and Security
GML Geography Markup Language
GNOME GNU Network Object Model Environment
GODAE Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment
GO-ESSP Global Organization for Earth System Science Portal
GOES Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, Environmental Satellite
GOES Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite
GPS Global Positioning System
GRIB Gridded Binary (Editions 1 and 2)
GRID Computational Grids
GRIDSPEC A proposed CF extension for the annotation of complex Earth system grids.
GSD Global Systems Division (NOAA)
GrADS Grid Analysis and Display System
GUI Graphical User Interface
H
return to top
HBCU Historically Black Colleges and Universities
HDF Hierarchical Data Format
HDF4 Hierarchical Data Format, version 4
HDF5 Hierarchical Data Format, version 5
HDS High Resolution Data Service
HPC Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (NOAA)
HPCC High Performance Computing & Communications
HPSS High Performance Storage System
HRRR High Resoluton Rapid Refresh
HTML Hypertext mark-up language
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HWRF Weather Research and Forecast System for Hurricane Prediction
HYDRA HYperspectral-viewer for Development of Research Applications
HYDRO-NEXRAD A system that allows access to the vast archives and real time information collected by the national network of NEXRAD radars.
HYRAX OPeNDAP Data Server
I
return to top
IAI Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research
ICARTT International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation
IDD Internet Data Distribution System
IDL Interactive Data Language
IDMS Integrated Data Management System
IDS International Data Services
IDV Integrated Data Viewer
IHOP
IIPS International Conference on Interactive Information Processing Systems for Meteorology, Oceanography, and Hydrology
IMAA Institute of Advanced Methodologies for Environmental Analysis
INGRID Name for an online data system at the Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory. It's not an acronym.
INPE Instituto de Pesquisas Espaciais (National Institute of Space Research in Sao Paulo, Brazil)
IPA Intergovernmental Personnel Act
IOOS Integrated Ocean Observing System
IPAMM Impact of Proposal and Award Management Mechanisms
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IPRC International Pacific Research Center
IPY International Polar Year
IRI International Research Institute for Climate Prediction
IRIS Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology
ISO International Standards Organization
ISO TC211 International Standards Organization TC211 , a spatial data standard
ISSE Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment, former NCAR program
IT Information Technology
ITC International Training Center
ITR International Technology Research
ITTVIS ITT Visual Information Solutions (now Exelis Visual Information Solutions). Makers of the IDL and ENVI software packages.
J
return to top
Java An object-oriented, platform-independent language from Sun, now widely used to create applets and applications for the Internet
JHT Joint Hurricane Testbed
JMS Java Messaging Service
JODI Journal of Digital Information
JOSS Joint Office for Science Support
JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA)
JPSS Joint Polar Satellite System. Polar-orbiting operational environmental satellite system operated by NOAA and NASA.
K
return to top
KDI Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence
KML Keyhole Markup Language
KMZ Compressed KML
KNMI Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute)
L
return to top
LAS Live Access Server
Latency In the context of the Unidata LDM, the delay in delivery of a data product since it was first injected from a data source site.
LDEO Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
LDM Local Data Manager
LEAD Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery
LEVEL II NWS WSR-88D Level II Radar Data
LEVEL III NWS WSR-88D Level III Radar Data
LGPL (GNU) Lesser General Public License
LLC Limited Liability Company
M
return to top
MADIS Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System
MASHUP A website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.
MATLAB A numerical computing environment and programming language.
McIDAS Man-computer Interactive Data Access System
McIDAS-V A Java-based version of McIDAS based on the SSEC-developed VisAD software and the Unidata Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) reference application and library.
METAR Meteorological Aviation Reports
MetApps Meteorological Applications Task Force
Metadata Data about (behind) the data (the attributes associated with the data).
MeteoForum Pilot project for advanced international meteorological training center capabilities.
ML Machine Learning
MM5 Mesoscale Model, version 5
MSI Minority Serving Institution
MODIS Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
MSI Minority-Serving Institution
MVC Model-View-Controller. An architectural pattern used in software engineering.
My Man-year
N
return to top
NAME North American Monsoon Experiment
NAPA National Academy of Public Administration
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAWIPS National Centers Advanced Weather Interactive Processing Systems
NCAR National Center for Atmospheric Research
ncBrowse NetCDF File Browser
NCDC National Climatic Data Center
NCEP National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NOAA)
NCF Network Control Facility
NcML The netCDF Markup Language
NCO NCEP Central Operations
NCO NetCDF Operators
NCOSRV NCO Data Server
NCSA National Center for Supercomputing Applications
NCWA NetCDF Weighted Average (one of the 12 NCO utilities)
NCWCP NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction
NDAP National Digital Archives Project
NetCDF Network Common Data Form
NDFD National Digital Forecast Database
NDE NPOESS Data Exploitation
NEON National Ecological Observatory Network
NESDIS National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service
NEXRAD Next Generation Weather Radar
NGDC National Geophysical Data Center
NGLDM Next-Generation LDM
NHC National Hurricane Center
NIDS NEXRAD Information and Data System
NLDN National Lightning Detection Network
NLR National LambdaRail
NMFS National Marine Fisheries Service
NMHS National Meteorological and Hydrological Service
NMM Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model
NMAP An integrated display and product generation GUI environment
NMQ National Mosaic and Multisensor QPE (NMQ) Project
NNTP Network News Transfer Protocol
NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NOAAport NOAA's broadcast data dissemination system
NOC Naval Oceanographic Command
NOGAPS U.S. Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System
NODC National Oceanographic Data Center
NOMADS The NOAA Operational Model Arvhive and Distribution System
NWSTG National Weather Service Telecommunications Gateway
NMI NSF Middleware Initiative
NSDL National Science Digital Library (NOAA)
NSF National Science Foundation
NPOESS National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System
NSIDC National Snow and Ice Data Center
NRL Naval Research Laboratory
NSPPO National Space Organization (Taiwan)
NSSL National Severe Storms Laboratory (NOAA)
NTSB National Transportation Safety Board
NVODS National Virtual Ocean Data System (formerly part of DODS)
NWP Numerical Weather Prediction
NWRT National Weather Radar Testbed
NWS National Weather Service (NOAA)
O
return to top
OAI Open Archives Initiative
OAR Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research
OCONUS Off CONUS
ODC Open Data Consortium Project to Standardize Data Distribution
OFCM Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorology
OGC Open Geospatial Consortium
OGSA Open Grid Services Architecture
OMB Office of Management and Budget
OPeNDAP Open Source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (formerly DODS)
OT&E Operational Test and Evaluation
P
return to top
PACI Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
PAGE Program for the Advancement of Geoscience Education, the precursor of DLESE
PCMDI Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison
PDA Personal Digital Assistant
PID Packet ID
PIRE Partnerships for International Research and Education
PMEL Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory (NOAA)
POES Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite
PPS Public Product Service
PRC People's Republic of China
Python Programming language created by Guido van Rossum in 1990.
Q
return to top
QC Quality Control
QPE Quantitative Precipitation Estimation
R
return to top
RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks
RAL Research Applications Laboratory
RAMADDA Repository for Archiving, Managing, and Accessing Diverse DAta
RAMS Regional Atmospheric Modeling System
RENCI Renaissance Computing Institute
REST Representational State Transfer
RFC River Forecast Center
RICO Rain in Cumulus Over the Ocean
RO Radio Occultation
ROC Republic of China
Rosetta A web-based service to transform ASCII output into Climate and Forecast (CF) compliant netCDF files
RSM Regional Spectral Model
RSS Really Simple Syndication
RTMA Real Time Mesoscale Analysis
RTOFS Real Time Ocean Forecast System
S
return to top
S3
(Amazon Web Service)
Amazon Simple Storage Service
SAO Surface Airways Observations
SNB Satellite Broadcast Network (NOAAPORT)
SGCI Science Gateway Community Institute
SCOOP SURA Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction
SGER Small Grants for Exploratory Research
SHEF Standard Hydrologic Exchange Format
SINOTS Interoperability System for supporting the Italian Scientific Community working in Earth Observations from Space
SIS Scientific Information System (sometimes used in contrast to GIS)
SMB Shanghai Meteorological Bureau
SOA Service Oriented Architecture
SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol
SOARS Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science
SPC Storm Prediction Center
SPIE International Society for Optical Engineering
SREF Short-Range Ensemble Forecast
SSEC Space Science and Engineering Center of the University of Wisconsin at Madison
STI Shanghai Typhoon Institute
STELLA Structural Thinking Experimental Learning Laboratory with Animation
STEM Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
SuomiNet An international network of GPS receivers, configured and managed to generate near real-time estimates of precipitable water vapor in the atmosphere, total electron content in the ionosphere, and other meteorological and geodetic information.
Suomi NPP Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership
SURA Southeastern Universities Research Association
SWEET Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology
SWFSC Southwest Fisheries Science Center
T
return to top
TACC Texas Advanced Computing Center
TAMDAR Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting
TB Terabyte
TDR THREDDS Data Repository, a precursor to RAMADDA
TDS THREDDS Data Server
THORPEX THe Observing system Research and Predictability EXperiment
T-Rex Terrain-induced Rotor Experiment
THREDDS Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services
TIGGE THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble
TIMSS Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study
TMRP Team Multidisciplinary Research Project
TRMM Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission
TPC Tropical Prediction Center
TPS Report Testing Procedure Specification document
U
return to top
UAH University of Alabama, Huntsville
UCAR University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
UCP UCAR Community Programs (formerly the UCAR Office of Programs)
UCSB University of California, Santa Barbara
UDDI Universal Description, Discovery and Integration of Web Services
UDUNITS The Unidata units library supports conversion of unit specifications between formatted and binary forms, arithmetic manipulation of unit specifications, and conversion of values between compatible scales of measurement.
UNAVCO University NAVSTAR [not an acronym] Consortium
UPC Unidata Program Center
UNC University of North Carolina
UPS Uninterruptible Power Supply
UOP UCAR Office of Programs, now the UCAR Community Programs
URM Underrepresented Minorities
URL Universal Resource Locator
USGCRP United States Global Change Research Program
USGS U.S. Geological Survey
USPLN United States Precision Lightning Network
V
return to top
VGEE Virtual Geophysical Exploration Environment
VisAD Visualization for Algorithm Development. VisAD is a Java component library for interactive and collaborative visualization and analysis of numerical data.
VOC Virtual Operations Center
VORTEX Verification of the Origins of Rotation In Tornadoes Experiment
W
return to top
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
WAR Web ARchive File
WCRP World Climate Research Program
WCS Web Coverage Service
WES Weather Event Simulator
WFO Weather Forecast Office, of the National Weather Service
Web 2.0 A second folksonomies — which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.
WFS Web Feature Service
Wiki website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinkedweb pages
WMO World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
WMS Web Mapping Service
Workstation ETA A version of NCEP's mesoscale model designed to run on workstations
WRF Weather Research and Forecasting Model
   
WSCI Web Service Choreography Interface
WSDL Web Services Description Language
WSI WSI Corporation
WSR WSR-88D radars
WxWISE Weather Wise
X
return to top
XML Extensible Markup Language
XSEDE eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment
Z
return to top
zlib A software library used for data compression.