Using TENA to Distribute 4DWX Weather Data

February 8, 2006

A team from the Meteorology Division at Dugway Proving Ground, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Keane Corporation has developed a weather server using the Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA). This server is designed to provide meteorological data to participants in a Distributed Test Event (DTE),or any joint exercise that needs weather information.

The Need

Many of the participants in a simulated exercise need weather information in order to perform realistically in the synthetic environment. Artillery units need pressure and temperature at the firing point, mobile ground units need soil moisture over the area of travel, and aerial units need 3-dimensional winds and moisture to avoid turbulence and determine visibility. Dispersion models need 3-D information over time (4-D) to calculate where a plume of hazardous material will drift.

Weather Data

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) generates weather data and forecasts for Dugway Proving Ground using Real-Time Four-Dimensional Data Acquisition (RTFDDA). This system accepts weather observations continually, and uses them as inputs to a mesoscale weather model (MM5) to generate accurate forecasts for the DTE. The illustration below shows surface temperature and wind fields over White Sands Missile Range.

The 4DWX weather information generated by RTFDDA is ingested by the TENA Weather Server and made available to DTE clients using the TENA protocol.

TENA Weather Server

Keane Corporation developed the TENA Weather Server to deliver data efficiently to TENA clients. The weather server provides for retrieval of 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D data, according to the simulated clock time in the test event. The server responds to a client request by retrieving the data from the requested area, packaging it for delivery across the network, and sending the data packet via the TENA protocol. The client unpackages the data using the methods supplied by the TENA Object Model. A large number of atmospheric fields are supplied (winds, temperature, pressure, precipitation, clouds, soil, humidity, etc.). The following diagram shows the data flow of the TENA Weather Server.

Contacts:

Dr. Elford Astling

Meteorology Division

Dugway Proving Ground, Utah

(435) 831-5359

Carl Drews

Research Applications Laboratory

National Center for Atmospheric Research

Boulder, Colorado

(303) 497-2802

James Morris

Keane Corporation

South Jordan, Utah

(801) 522-7103