Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

About Me:

Bob Lipschutz received his BS (1974) and MS (1980) in Meteorology from Penn State University. He was a Scientific Assistant in the Atmospheric Physics Section at Argonne National Laboratory from 1974 to 1976, working on several boundary layer meteorology field projects. After leaving Penn State, where he worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of Meteorology following completion of his MS, Bob was on CIRA’s NOAA/PROFS team from 1981 to 1983. His early work at PROFS involved assuring quality of the 22-station PROFS Mesonet, and developing systems to acquire and decode surface and upper air (SAO and RAOB) data from the FAA604 service. He then began developing software to process NCAR CP-2 Doppler radar data, and creating a framework to prototype and validate WSR-88D (NEXRAD) Radar Product Generator (RGP) algorithms, including Storm Segments, Mesocyclone, and Tornado Vortex Signature. This initial radar work led to creation of a distributed real-time Doppler radar subsystem to generate products for display on the PROFS and FSL weather workstations, and later to development of the NEXRAD Product Interface system that acquired Level-III radar products from the NEXRAD RPG for display on the Pre-AWIPS system, which was deployed operationally at the Norman, OK, NWS Forecast Office.

Since re-joining CIRA in 1997, Bob’s work has included directing development of GOES GVAR and WSR-88D Level-II acquisition systems, and generally collaborating with other members of NOAA/ESRL Global Systems Division’s Data Services Group on a variety data ingest, processing, and distribution tasks in support of numerous projects throughout GSD, including the Rapid Refresh (RAP) and High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) models, and Science on a Sphere® (SOS).

Bob serves as the Production Control Manager for GSD’s Central Facility real-time data systems, managing the configuration and operation of over two dozen data processing Linux servers that currently handle some 4 TBytes of data per day.

His area of expertise focuses on meteorological data acquisition and processing systems, with experience handling WSR-88D radar, GOES satellite, and NOAAPORT data streams, as well as such acquisition and distribution protocols as ftp, http, LDM.