Molenar, Connell, Dostalek, Gosden, Smith, Hillger

An updated version of tropical RAMSDIS has been prepared for the Hurricane Research Division.  New products including SST images and SSMI images which match movable floating image loops have been added.  To improve the systems performance, the software has been updated to take advantage of some of the new commands available in McIDAS that will minimize both Internet usage and local disk input/output.  In addition to software upgrades, a faster computer system will serve as the platform for the 1999 hurricane season.

Several new products have been developed for evaluation as applications to support forecasting.  They will be implemented on Tropical RAMSDIS, SAB RAMSDIS or a comparable system for testing during the 1999 hurricane season.  1) A 24-hr average water vapor image animation over a large GOES-East area highlights persistent features, with diurnal and short term variability removed.  2) A similar product with averaging done in motion relative coordinates over 6-hr with 4 km resolution GOES IR gives an alternate view of hurricane structure changes.  3) A cloud clearing routine is run daily with nighttime 3.9 micrometer images, and then again with the daily images over a 7-day period, produces a sea-surface temperature product which can be animated to show ocean feature motions in the absence of extensive cloud cover.

The latest RAMSDIS Upgrade is at a testing stage.  It will be deployed at the end of the summer.

An Intranet Web page was created with information pertaining to RAMSDIS.