Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

About Me:

Brian Jamison began working with the NOAA as a cooperative education student while attending Metropolitan State College of Denver. He received his BSc in Meteorology in 1991, and joined CIRA in 1995. Since then, he has been a key member of several projects, beginning with the Global Atmosphere-ocean IN-situ System (GAINS), a project to develop long-lived superpressure weather balloons which have altitude control. He has also made contributions in forecasting turbulence for the Federal Aviation Administration and road condition forecasting for the Federal Highway Administration. He was involved in two high-profile meteorological field experiments: the International H2O Project (IHOP) and the Terrain-induced Rotor Experiment (T-REX) project. His current areas of interest include modeling and model graphics, observing system experiments (OSEs), data denial and relative impact analyses, and web development. He has created and manages a number of web pages for model data viewing, including cutting-edge models such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, the Rapid Refresh (RR) and High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) models, and the latest global model, the Flow-following finite-volume Icosahedral Model (FIM).

An example plot of Skin Temperature from the FIM global model. Thursday, March 13, 2014

An example plot of Skin Temperature (temperature approximately 2 meters above ground level) from the FIM global model. The FIM model uses an icosahedral grid (an array of hexagons and pentagons fitted together, somewhat resembling the panels on a soccer ball, distributed evenly around the globe) which is interpolated to a latitude-longitude grid for plotting versatility. It uses an adaptive isentropic-sigma vertical coordinate system which has been used very successfully in the well known Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) model, and accurate finite-volume horizontal advection.