FX-Net and Education

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FSL in Review

User's Manual
(external link)

FX-Net is a meteorological PC workstation that provides access to the basic display capability of an AWIPS workstation via the Internet. The AWIPS workstation user interface is emulated very closely. Bandwidth limitations are addressed by using new data compression techniques along with multithreaded client-side processing and communication.

FX-Net is a request based, client-server system intended to be an extension of the AWIPS D2D capability over the Internet. The server is a modified AWIPS workstation and is primarily responsible for time matching of products and for creation and delivery of the product files. The client runs as a Java application on a PC. After retrieving products via the Internet, it allows a user to locally interact with the information. Connections to the server are only maintained during the request and retrieval of products. Wavelet transform is being used to compress model and satellite imagery. The application of this relatively new compression technique is critical to the success of delivering very large-size imagery via the Internet in a reasonable amount of time.


FX-Net Display of Colorado Wildfires

The Web has become an important resource for meteorological information. Satellite imagery, forecast models, radar, and observations are available on numerous sites. A standard Web browser provides a basic forecasting capability to a meteorologist. FX-Net provides an improved capability in many ways. The FX-Net client is able to display products from a very large menu of choices. As is the case with D2D, the client can load and overlay products of various types and interact with that information. Functionality includes animation, toggle of overlays, zooming, and swapping of display windows. By emulating the D2D interface, FX-Net is easily learned by those who have AWIPS experience. It takes little effort to adjust the system to display customized scales, to add additional observational data, and to display special customer-oriented forecast models in combination with the existing palette of AWIPS products. It is this flexibility of FX-Net that has made it a very popular meteorological workstation in research, teaching, and operational forecast scenarios.

FX-Net
The Fire Weather Workstation:

Recently a variety of new functionalities and products were added to FX-Net with the goal to make FX-Net usable for fire weather forecasters working out of offices and working in the field. One of the more outstanding new data sets is a complete text browser, which allows for the display of a large number of National Weather Service forecast and discussion text products. Additional new tools allow for the export of products displayed in the primary window and for change of contour intervals for displayed model products. FX-Net also added special display scales for the viewing of high-resolution satellite imagery in areas with wildfires. New high-density surface observation data sets and wind profiler data became part of the product menu. A considerable amount of time was dedicated to work on the robustness of the overall system, which led to a significant improvement in the reliability of FX-Net.
Fire Weather Forecaster Using FX-Net (GACC Office, Lakewood, Colorado)
FX-Net
The real-time Air Quality Workstation

For the last couple of years FX-Net has been supporting AIRMAP, a University of New Hampshire (UNH) Program, whose primary mission is to develop a detailed understanding of climate variability and the source of persistent air pollutants in New England. The FX-Net team modified the existing real-time meteorological workstation by adding air quality related data sets to the system. A new FX-Net/AQ client was released in time to support real-time forecasters who participated in an air quality field program during summer 2002. New FX-Net/AQ products included six air quality parameters (O3, CO, NO, NOy, SO2, Condensation Particles) that are continuously measured at three UNH sites in New Hampshire. The FX-Net/AQ user also has access to the data from thirteen wind profilers recently installed across the New England region. In addition, hundreds of new meteorological surface observations, fixed buoy records and ship measurements are available on the latest FX-Net menu. FX-Net also displays the hourly average of the national low-level ozone data.

Specifications:

FX-Net Client: PC, 500 MHz or faster, 512 MB Ram, Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP Pro
FX-Net Server: Dual processor (1GHz) PC, Linux, high-speed link to AWIPS data server

Contact: Sher Schranz
Telephone: 303-497-7254
email: Sher.Schranz@noaa.gov