Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

The Value of CIRA Research

Satellite Imagery:  A Picture is Worth A Thousand Lives

Summary:  Cooperative Institutes (CI’s) develop new satellite products that serve as a force multiplier for our Nation’s forecasters

The incredible ability to quickly analyze weather systems using satellites was one of the greatest advances of the 20^th century; with the help of CI research, these abilities continue to grow to the national benefit.  Our research leads the way in developing:

• Detecting fires and their health and visibility-impacting smoke plumes,
• Depiction of hazardous lightning-producing storms,
• Detection of dust and volcanic ash that impacts drivers and pilots,
• Snow fields and areas blowing snow impacting drivers, and
• Low cloud and fog impacting the maritime and coastal communities.

Our products emphasize simplicity of interpretation; even untrained users can quickly assess notable features in our products.  Skilled users can combine our products with other sources of information to quickly interpret critical weather with sufficient time to issue life-saving guidance. 

Such imagery can be combined with other kinds of forecast model data, making it easy to do side-by-side comparisons that help make sense out of complex weather situations. 

What is needed: Healthy budgets for the supporters of CI applied research enables these critical, cost-saving, and life-saving research efforts.

More information:

Realtime Satellite Imagery: https://col.st/TGrvP

Satellite Training Modules: https://col.st/fDrMB

Satellite Product Guides: https://col.st/M1FfZ

Fire weather forecasting: A Critical Need

Summary: Academia, partnering with various Federal agencies, fast-tracks the design and implementation of tools that protect our Nation’s economy and save lives.

Major fires, especially those at the wildland-urban interface (where people live close to undeveloped lands), continue to devastate huge sectors of the US economy; the recent Los Angeles-area fires alone claimed at least 29 lives and caused in excess of $164 billion in damage. 

Addressing this immediate and growing threat requires:

• Advances in fire detection, and “fire weather” forecasting,
• Increased and coordination of Federal agencies and partners addressing fire challenges,
• Better understanding of how the public responds to and reacts to dangerous fire conditions, fire weather warnings, and evacuations.

Cooperative Institute research underpins all of these efforts: from initial fire detection from satellites, to training of weather forecasters, to developing the most effective public communication techniques to ensure people react quickly to stay out of harm’s way.  

What is needed:  Protection of funding for real-time fire monitoring and forecast tools, treating wildfire with the same level of concern as severe weather and tropical storms.

More information:

NOAA Fire Weather: https://col.st/xvvgj

CSU AI Fire Forecasting: https://col.st/C4HYB

Social Science in Fire Communications: https://col.st/mAplH

Artificial Intelligence:  Traversing the Realm of Possibility

Summary: Artificial intelligence (AI) represents the next big opportunity in more accurate and cost-effective weather forecasting.  This doesn’t have to be done as a leap of faith,  an informed and comprehensive approach can ensure that AI-generated  forecasts are actually better.

The national imperative to lead the field of AI comes at a time of great challenge and international competition.  Recent advances in commercial AI development ride upon novel ideas coming out of academic research.  Discipline experts put us in the best position to take the right steps forward.

Critically, Cooperative Institute (CI) based AI research leads the way in:

• Assessing the many bold (and sometimes misleading) claims of new capabilities in weather forecasting based on AI techniques,
• Using AI to enhance detection and forecasting of fires, including the weather responsible for fanning small fire into regional disasters,
• New tools to locate and predict the paths of hurricanes, and anticipate where severe weather will happen next.
• Analyzing the ever changing cloud-fields to support safe and efficient commercial and private aviation operations,

Continued development along these lines will lead to cost savings and faster, more accurate forecasts that are grounded in physical explanations—we must always understand why AI models work, and when they don’t, as opposed to having blind faith in the products.

What is needed:  Increased and strategically-coordinated support for AI efforts as a National priority, partnering Federal Agencies, Universities, and Private Sector to maximize benefit.

More information:

CSU AI Fire Forecasting: https://col.st/C4HYB

Future of AI Weather Forecasting: https://col.st/TWeku

Aviation Safety:  A Crossroads in National Capability

Summary: Aviation has never been more important to commerce and ensuring a high quality of living for Americans.  Active engagement between Federal agencies and Academia ensure accurate and safe flight planning and operations.

Recent air safety mishaps and disasters, including those involving weather factors  (severe turbulence, dust storms, ice build-up on aircraft or ‘icing’,  ingest of ice or ash in turbine engines), underscore the imperative of timely and accurate observations and forecasts. 

Centralized, coordinated, and efficient mechanisms for aviation-relevant weather to be delivered to pilots, airline dispatchers, is critically important.  Cooperative Institute (CI) research in partnership with the Aviation Weather Center and the Department of Defense is creating new and powerful products, including:

• Current and forecasted aircraft icing potential products,
• Graphical displays of turbulence zones,
• Showing where convective weather is active and where it will form next,
• Three-dimensional depictions of clouds and how they can impact visibility.

…all of which can be displayed in real-time using intuitive online tools, creating imagery that places this information directly on flight path information provided by pilots and aviation dispatchers.

What is needed:  Advocacy for the inter-agency coordination that CIs can provide for continued development and support for these efforts promise increases in aviation safety.

More information:

Aviation Weather Center at CIRA: https://col.st/jsdtl

AWC Realtime Products: https://col.st/lyQ3V

Cloud Layer Research at CIRA: https://col.st/IvIvI

Discovery Science:  Earth’s Mysteries Guide the Way to Practical Knowledge

Summary: Cooperative Institute (CI) high-risk/high-reward research uncovers wonders of our planet that not only answer centuries-old mysteries, but point us toward a better understanding about how the Earth works as a connected “system”.

In science, surprises are par for the course.  New instruments, designed for one thing, sometimes stumble upon some other unexpected use, pointing us in new directions.  In this case, a satellite designed for detecting clouds at night became the focus for something totally different—a rare but possibly very important form of bioluminescence in the ocean:

• “Milky seas”, a term coined by ancient mariners who encountered these huge expanses of glowing ocean, teetered on the fence of fact and fiction for centuries. 
• Recently, CI researchers working with special low-light sensors onboard Air Force and NOAA/NASA satellites began detecting strange features on the high seas.
• It was confirmed via chance ship-based surface reports that these features were indeed glowing ocean water, on the scale of 10,000 square miles or more.
• The cause is thought to be luminous bacteria, and if so, the question becomes what role the smallest form of organism might play in regulating the Earth’s carbon uptake in the ocean.

While the needs for innovative science applied to operational weather forecasting remain the primary goal NOAA’s CI program, the ability to pivot toward a scientific discovery that could change our understanding of how the ocean, the air, and the life of the sea “talk to each other” is an excellent example of opportunistic research and ingenuity of our National science program.

What is needed: Strong support for basic science, echoing the support provided to American researchers who split the atom, cured diseases, and landed humans on the Moon.

More information:

Milky Seas Research: https://col.st/QOLTt

Upper Atmospheric Airglow: https://col.st/2ZZSR

Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai Eruption: https://col.st/QDEqA

By the Numbers:  The Positive Impacts of NOAA on American Economy

Summary: Cooperative Institute (CI) researchers, in partnership with the National Weather Service (NWS),  reveal the specific economic benefits of weather research to the American economy

From agriculture, to the energy industry, to transportation, NOAA research helps America grow bigger/healthier crops, generate more power, and enable commerce prosperity via more efficient and safer transportation on air, land, and sea.  Specific examples of NWS value-added include:

• Lettuce producers netted around $24 million/year in added value based on timely and accurate NWS-supplied precipitation forecasts.
• The wine industry saves over $1 million/year by conducting early harvests in advance of wildfire-produced smoke—situations informed by NWS fire & smoke forecasts.
• The electrical grid experiences significant increases or decreases in electrical load depending on the weather.  Satellite-enabled NWS forecast products are projected to total $41 to $136 million/year. 
• Likewise, hydroelectric plants benefit $88 million/year from high-quality NWS forecasts. 
• NWS and Department of Energy research on solar forecasting is poised to net approximately $45 million/year by 2040. 
• Accurate forecasting in the aviation industry reduces flight delays to the tune of $102 to $150 million/year
• Commuting delays hurt American businesses; improved air traffic forecasting saves about $57 million/year.

What is needed: continued funding and support for a broad spectrum of NOAA/NWS research, which provide myriad  benefits for American commerce far beyond the initial impact.WS research, which provide secondary and tertiary benefit for American commerce far beyond the initial impact.

More information:

Benefits to agriculture: https://col.st/Rb4e3

Benefits to energy production: https://col.st/zccTg

Benefits to transportation: https://col.st/TeYeG

Rising from the Ashes:  A case study in how Cooperative Institutes operate on the front lines of fire weather research

The Yarnell Hill Fire , a wildfire in Arizona killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots on June 30, 2013 when a sudden and unforecasted wind shift due to thunderstorm activity increased the intensity of the fire, cutting off escape routes in rough terrain and overtaking the hotshot crew.

In direct response to this tragedy, CIRA began developing a new AI algorithm to accurately represent the placement and timing of convection in NOAA’s primary short-term forecast model.  The AI-based product uses GOES imager and lightning data to simulate radar information where actual radar information does not exist.

At the same time, CIRA developed new imagery tools to assist forecasters with real-time monitoring of developing convection (and lightning) which impacts firefighting operations, again using GOES imaging and lightning data.

Fast-forward to March 22, 2021: fire fighters near Midland, Texas are battling a blaze on its southern flank.  Suddenly, a thunderstorm gust front blasts down from the north, threatening a sudden and dramatic shift in the fire, potentially endangering the firefighting crews’ lives, as with the Yarnell Hill fire incident. 

With the help of these newly-developed satellite products, however, the National Weather Service forecast office in Midland, TX noted the inbound hazard and immediately sprang into action, issuing time-critical guidance to the firefighters.

“Forecasters were able to communicate the precise timing of the outflow to local partners, resulting in fire crews moving off the southern periphery of the fire prior to the wind shift and dramatic drop in visibility, potentially saving lives and equipment.”   –NWS, Midland TX WFO

Together with NOAA and other Cooperative Institute partners, CIRA supports the NOAA Fire Weather Testbed, the NOAA Next Generation Fire System, and NASA Disasters programs—critical efforts to confronting the Nation’s increasing vulnerability to wildland fires.

Take-Away Message:  Cooperative Institutes address real-world challenges with novel scientific approaches, leveraging taxpayer investments in NOAA’s state of the art satellite resources, remote sensing expertise, and cutting-edge AI technology to improve forecasts, assist commerce, and save American lives.