The MesoWest Research Group, led by Dr. John Horel, conducts applied research and development for:
The MesoWest Research Group is part of the Mountain Meteorology Group, which is within the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. We are located on the fourth floor of the Intermountain Network and Scientific Computation Center (INSCC) at The University of Utah. MesoWest has been a source of North American weather information for millions of users from the mid-1990's through the present. We rely on hundreds of data providers who make available their provisional, non-proprietary data. Databases are replicated between Amazon Cloud Services, the University of Utah and Western Region of the National Weather Service (NWS) to store all the information. Software has been developed over the years by NWS and University of Utah staff to access, archive, and disseminate the information in graphical, tabular, and downloadable formats.
Research grants from the NWS, other federal and state agencies, and commercial firms have supported MesoWest services over the years. Tools to evaluate real-time and archival data have been and will continue to be available for public safety, fire management, air quality, education, research, and many other diverse applications. The University of Utah MesoWest team has participated in the NWS National Mesonet Program (NMP). The NMP facilitates access to non-federal environmental data resources for operational and research applications of the NWS. Support from the NWS CSTAR program provides resources to help facilitate access to federal data providers as well.
MesoWest research and development has also been fostered by Synoptic Data PBC, which has been building on MesoWest capabilities to better serve commercial customers with additional capabilities such as real-time access to observations via API services. The goals of these ongoing efforts are to explore and help transition to operations improved methods that: improve reliability; reduce latency; store and disseminate current and retrospective data efficiently from both open and private sources; and enhance the usability of the data by providing accurate metadata and estimates of data quality.
While the Utah Mesonet began in 1994, we consider January 1, 1997 to be the start of MesoWest. Since then, the MesoWest and Synoptic Data archives have continued to expand as additional resources and data feeds were integrated into our systems.
Dr. Horel, on behalf of the MesoWest team, accepted the 2016 Francis W. Reichelderfer Award of the American Meteorological Society "For development and leadership of the MesoWest observation network in support of operations, research, and education to improve understanding and forecasting of mountain meteorology."
The MesoWest group also maintains and provides communication support for a network of weather stations primarily along the Wasatch Front. The UUNET network consists of about 70 active weather stations, about 25 of which use equipment purchased and installed by the University of Utah or collaborating partners. More information on UUNET can be found here.
Although MesoWest serves as the core of our activities, students and staff in the are also working on research and development projects locally along the Wasatch Front and around the nation. Visit our Current Projects and Publications page to see more about these projects.
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Have any questions? Feel free to send any email requests to the atmos-mesowest@lists.utah.edu mail group.