1. Climate Perspectives (CLIMPER): A New Tool for Assessing the State of the Climate Across the Southeast U.S.
Charles E. Konrad Southeast Regional Climate Center & UNC Chapel Hill
Ryan Boyles and John McGuire NC State Climate Office, NC State Univ.
William Schmitz Southeast Regional Climate Center

2. Climate Perspectives (CLIMPER) Talk Outline
Background
Description of CLIMPER’s features
3. Current Work on CLIMPER
CLIMPER:

3. 1. Background
Much recent attention directed towards climate variability and how ongoing, recent, or forecasted weather & climate extremes compare with the past.
Many economic sectors have become more vulnerable to weather and climate extremes (e.g. agricultural, energy, water, transportation etc.).
Hence a strong need to monitor the current state of the climate and compare it with the past.

4. Background (continued)
Climate Perspectives (CLIMPER) assesses ongoing and recent state of the climate across most weather stations in the SE US.
CLIMPER provides a fluid perspective on the magnitude of temperature or precipitation anomalies across different time periods. It can also find the closest historical analogs to a given event.
First prototype developed in late 1990’s using FORTRAN.
First web-based, automated routine in mid-2000’s
Re-design in late 2007 with NC State Climate Office providing expertise and software development.
Various add ons, including maps as well as measures of thresholds/streaks, over the last year.

5. Technical Details
CLIMPER is powered by ACIS (Applied Climate Information System), which is maintained by the Regional Climate Centers (RCCs)
PHP software utilizes MySQL databases containing ACIS data
Run in parallel across multiple machines
Database and Processor intensive (~30 min per run).
To provide timely updates, CLIMPER runs 4 times/24 hours –
10am & noon across all stations via ACIS data feed
4pm at ASOS stations located near major cities
2am at all ASOS stations
The 4pm and 2am are updates based on preliminary METAR values obtained from a Unidata LDM. These values are recalculated when observations from these stations come in from ACIS.

6. 2. Description:
Local Station Perspective

7. Local Station Perspective
Features:
choice of dates

8. Features: A. Local Station Perspective
Identify nearest station by a) select an address or b) choosing a predefined location

9. A. Local Station Perspective – expanded view

10. Local Station Perspective
User has an option of viewing history and sorting values from lowest to highest or vice versa.

11. B. Regional Map Perspective: Values
Expanded view

12. B. Regional Map Perspective: Ranks
Expanded view

13. C. Streaks & Thresholds
Period thresholds – frequency of days in a given period in which temperature => or <= a given threshold.
Streak thresholds – longest streak (i.e. consecutive days) in a given period in which temperature >= or <= a given threshold.
Example: Period thresholds

14. C. Period Thresholds (expanded perspective)

15. Example: Sorted Period Threshold >= 32 F

16. 3. Current Work Forecast Perspectives
- Based on National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD)

17. 3. Current Work B. Climate Perspectives expanded to the entire U.S.
Example: Maximum temperature on June 30, 2010

18. 3. Current Work B. Climate Perspectives expanded to the entire U.S.
Example: Avg. maximum temperature for June 2010, expressed in percentiles

19. 3. Current Work (continued)
Challenges for current/future work
Computational Expenses associated with:
Expansion of Perspectives for the United States
Processing point data from forecast models per station
Custom or user defined thresholds and streaks per station
Visualization approach pushing limits of Google Maps
Client-side mapping to allow for dynamic interactivity
Rendering entire U.S. station Perspectives may make older computers, browsers unstable
Climate Perspectives: