Upper Air Displays

Plan View Plots

The Upper Air menu contains plan view (horizontal) and vertical profiles of wind, temperature, and humidity upper air observations from weather balloons, radar, profilers, and aircraft. It also contains aviation-related issued products.

Standard RAOB pressure surface charts, like 850mb, are located in the UA plots menu for 12hr intervals.

Some regions are providing limited profiler data to certain sites, but most sites won't have access to profiler data in AWIPS.

The VWP plots provide rapidly updating plots of winds derived from single-Doppler radar data. Because VWPs require sufficient scatterers to derived accurate wind estimates, you will typically find more continuous data in low-levels, which can be great for resolving the rapid intensification of features like the low-level jet.

If you have significant airports in your CWA, the aircraft temperature, dewpoint, and wind observations provide a valuable look at what is going on above the ground in between RAOB times. The Pilot Weather REPorts (PIREPS) are more scattered reports, while the Meteorological Data Collection and Reporting System (MDCRS) contain more widespread aircraft observations. These observations can be critical in winter weather situations in diagnosing the strength of a mid-level jet streak or elevated warm layers that can influence precipitation type in winter weather situations.

While some of these raw upper-air observations can provide critical observations of the environment that can be useful in some warning operations, in RAC we will spend more time focusing on sounding analysis of the vertical profiles of the near-storm environment in NSHARP.

NSHARP

This lesson covers the National Center Sounding and Hodograph Analysis and Research Program (NSHARP). This program is based on the Storm Prediction Center’s sounding display tool, BigSHARP and the online available Python version, SHARpy. NSHARP is loaded within the D-2D perspective in CAVE as a new map editor when RAOBs and model soundings are requested. NSHARP was originally designed in the National Centers Perspective for National Centers, and it has been modified for WFO use in the D-2D perspective. The AWIPS version of NSHARP is relatively new to WFOs and has evolved significantly to address some of the unique needs of WFOs. With many other sounding packages available online, NSHARP use will vary significantly from WFO to WFO. Many of the latest severe weather analysis advances at the SPC are regularly incorporated into NSHARP, and so there is a lot of new science available to WFOs that is beginning to be incorporated into WFO operations.

NSHARP soundings are loaded by default for RAOBs in the Upper Air menu, soundings in the Volume Browser, or NUCAPS soundings from the Satellite-> NPP Products-> NUCAPS Sounding Availability menu (and circles on the display). In 21.4.1 a new NSHARP tool has been added to the Tools menu that allows you to load upper air and high-resolution bufr model forecasts from a point and click map. See this 21.4.1 jobsheet for more information on that.

The NSHARP Display

The NSHARP display has four different screen configurations:

SPC Wide - most comprehensive capability for insets and graphs (minus the timeline/station inventory panel) but takes up more real-estate

D2D Skewt Standard - default for WFOs, larger SkewT with timeline/station inventory panel, no wind vs ht, no temperature advection, no insets, and no graphs (relative to SPC Wide Screen Configuration)

D2D Lite - Skew-T, table, and inventory only

OPC - Ocean Prediction Center display

For this training it will be most helpful to review the SPC Wide Screen Configuration first because it has most of the capabilities turned on.

In the SPC Wide Screen Configuration there are seven different sections (some sections removed for the D2D versions) and an NSHARP(D2D) control buttons tab. The following pages contain a basic summary of each section and any tasks relevant to each of the displays.

If you would like to interactively explore the different graphical areas in NSHARP on the Web, see the NSHARP Interactive Overview (note only available on the Web). 

NSHARP(D2D) Control Buttons Tab

There are a series of buttons that control the functionality and display of NSHARP. We will highlight some of the basic functions needed to run NSHARP throughout this lesson. You may need to drag the top of the control buttons window higher to display the bottom row of buttons, particularly in the SPC Wide Screen Configuration. See the NSHARP Interactive Overview on the Web for more information.

Skew-T Display

The Skew-T display (referred to by label "ii" in the NSHARP schematic images) depicts a vertical profile of temperature, dew point, and wind for RAOBs and model point soundings using a Skew-T Log-P diagram. The Skew-T is loaded by default and is controlled by the “S” button in the NSHARP(D2D) control buttons window. The Skew-T can be changed to a turbulence display (“T” button) or an icing display (“I” button). The main location for identifying the sounding and time in the Skew-T is in the box in the upper-left. This box is linked to the cursor readout triggered when the mouse pointer moves over the Skew-T. The first number in the cursor readout is the temperature at the cursor location, and the rest of the numbers are the temperature, dewpoint, wind direction and speed, pressure, height AGL, and RH of the Skew-T trace at that level. Use the AWIPS NSHARP Interactive Overview page for more information about the Skew-T display.

Windspeed vs Height and Inferred Temperature Advection (only on SPC Wide Screen)

The windspeed vs height and inferred temperature advection with height plot (referred to by label "iii" in the NSHARP schematic images) is situated next to the Skew-T to show the values at the same heights. Inferred temperature advection is from the thermal wind. Use the AWIPS-2 NSHARP Interactive Overview page for more information about the Skew-T display.

Hodograph Display (not on D2D Lite)

This panel contains the hodograph display from the sounding data (referred to by label "iv" in the NSHARP schematic images). The rings in the hodograph represent the wind speed in 20 knot increments. The hodograph trace uses different colors to highlight wind observations in 3 km height increments. This display also contains information such as the mean wind, Bunkers Left/Right Moving storm motion, upshear and downshear Corfidi vectors, and a user-defined motion. Use the AWIPS NSHARP Interactive Overview page for more information about the hodograph display.

Insets (only on SPC Wide Screen)

In the SPC Wide Screen Configuration there are four small insets beneath the hodograph containing storm-relative windspeed versus height, a Storm Slinky, Theta-E vs Pressure, Possible Watch Type, Thea-E vs Height, and storm-relative wind vectors (referred to by label "v" in the NSHARP schematic images). There are buttons in the NSHARP(D2D) control button tab that toggle the six possible contents in the four boxes. Use the AWIPS NSHARP Interactive Overview page for more information on the tables and a list/definition of the parameters available.

Table Output Displays

The Table Output Displays (referred to by label "vi" in the NSHARP schematic images) contains five different pages of parameters ranging from parcel instability to storm relative shear to severe hazards potential. Use the AWIPS NSHARP Interactive Overview page for more information on the tables and a list/definition of the parameters available.

Graphs/Statistics (only on SPC Wide Screen)

In the SPC Wide Screen Configuration there are two graphs boxes under the insets (referred to by label "vii" in the NSHARP schematic images), and they can display information on Enhanced Bulk Shear, Significant Tornado Parameter, Significant Hail Parameter (SHIP), Winter Weather, Fire Weather, Hail model (not implemented), and the Sounding Analog Retrieval System (SARS). There are buttons in the NSHARP(D2D) control button tab that toggle the six possible contents in the two boxes. Use the AWIPS NSHARP Interactive Overview page for more information on the tables and a list/definition of the parameters available.

Sounding Inventory (not on SPC Wide Screen)

This section (referred to by label "viii" in the NSHARP schematic images) controls the inventory of the soundings that have been loaded for potential display in NSHARP. The different colors of the text represent variously that a sounding/station is being displayed, available for display, or not available for display. Use the AWIPS NSHARP Interactive Overview page for more information on how to use the sounding inventory and time line.

NSHARP has an inventory table in the upper-right of the D2D Configurations to be able to identify and select different times, stations, and sources. There are also a number of keyboard shortcuts:

• left/right arrows - step through time lines for a station and source
• up/down arrows - step through stations (e.g. RAOB names or D2D Points) for a particular time and source (BUFRUA or ETA)
• shift + up/down arrows - step through sources (e.g. models) for a particular time and station
• left mouse button on timelines, stations, and sources text in upper-right table - changes state to current
• shift + left mouse button on timelines, stations, and sources text in upper-right table - toggles state “Active” or “InActive”
• shift + z - cycle through different font sizes for cursor readout on Skew-T when mouse pointer is over the Skew-T

The rest of this lesson will focus on some of the different functionality and display properties of NSHARP.

This completes the NSHARP lesson. There are more buttons to explore in NSHARP if you are interested that are beyond the scope of RAC. There are buttons to Save and Load a sounding as a text file (useful for ingesting your own sounding text files into NSHARP for research), as well as ShowText which allows you to look at the raw sounding information. The EditData and EditGraph buttons also allow you to edit the soundings manually.