{"id":2867,"date":"2013-05-03T13:12:59","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T18:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/?p=2867"},"modified":"2013-05-03T14:28:46","modified_gmt":"2013-05-03T19:28:46","slug":"weather-on-your-smart-phone-ssec-has-an-app-for-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/articles\/2867","title":{"rendered":"Satellite Imagery on Your Smart Phone \u2013 SSEC Has An App For That"},"content":{"rendered":"

In April of 2013, SSEC released its first smart-phone App designed specifically to display and animate full-resolution, real-time weather satellite data. The free App, called “WxSat<\/a>” (short for Weather Satellite), delivers imagery from the SSEC Web Mapping Server (WMS<\/a>) to iOS devices such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPod-Touch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Weather Sat App focuses exclusively on global composites created in the SSEC Data Center,\u201d says Dave Parker, the programmer of the application, \u201cwhich is one of the most extensive collections of real-time and archived satellite data in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Sam Batzli, the project\u2019s Geographic Information System (GIS) expert, says, \u201cThere are many geostationary and polar orbiting weather satellites around the globe capturing observations of the earth at varying time intervals.\u201d The team decided upon an open-source GIS system that is capable of collecting and processing geographically referenced information for use in mapping, visualization and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cSSEC\u2019s Data Center has a server dedicated to Weather Sat that blends the images into hourly composites,\u201d Batzli continues. \u201cThese composites in the visible, water vapor, and infrared ranges form the basis of the animations now available on your smartphone. With the Weather Sat App on your device, you can access the WMS and receive instant global coverage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerry Robaidek (SSEC Data Center) and Russ Dengel generate most of the composites for the WMS, while Dengel and Batzli create over 150 other products managed by the WMS.<\/p>\n

\"WxSat<\/a>

WxSat displays and animates full-resolution, real-time weather satellite data. WxSat provides global coverage for visible, infrared, and water vapor channels.<\/p><\/div>\n

Shortly after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, researchers at SSEC began to explore ways to publish satellite imagery and related geospatial information in formats suitable to display by smart phones.<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/a>

Sam Batzli demonstrates WxSat on an iPad at the UW-Madison Science Expeditions.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe technology of browsers and mobile devices changes rapidly,\u201d Batzli says. \u201cWe focused our efforts on building an open-source server infrastructure that could deliver content to a wide range of current and future mobile device and desktop software applications.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result of these efforts is the SSEC WMS, which accepts and processes meteorological, atmospheric, and land remote sensing data and imagery, both real-time and static, from a variety of satellite and sensor network sources. It converts and optimizes the data for display and interactivity in desktop software such as Google Earth, web browsers, geographic information systems (GIS), and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot more capability behind the scenes of this application,\u201d Parker says. \u201cCapabilities that we hope to expose as the WMS project matures.\u201d<\/p>\n

The WxSat App is available, free of charge, from the App Store<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brings Weather Data to Your Phone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2870,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-articles"],"acf":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2867"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2887,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2867\/revisions\/2887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}