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20021112: spotty data in the MDR products

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  • Subject: 20021112: spotty data in the MDR products
  • Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 14:11:04 -0700
>From:  Jim Koermer <address@hidden>
>Organization:  Plymouth State
>Keywords:  200211121541.gACFftL21487 IDD Unidata-Wisconsin MDR

Hi Jim,

>BTW, I've been keeping close tabs on various data that we receive
>through our NOAAPORT system and that is also received via IDD. The IDD
>feed is far from reliable. As an example, several hourly MDR radar
>summary product files (received via IDD) are woefully populated with
>data or missing altogether during each 24-hour period.

If you are referring to the MDR images in the Unidata-Wisconsin
datastream, the problem may be something other than the IDD.  The MDR
radar images are created from NOAAPORT data at SSEC.  If the data is
spotty within an image, it may mean that the data was spotty in the
NOAAPORT data it was created from.  If the product is missing
altogether, it may mean that SSEC did not receive the data on their
NOAAPORT ingest system, or some step in the process of creating the
product failed.

>These are small products, so you would expect better reliability.

I don't think that the lack of the product can automatically be
interpreted as the failure of the IDD to deliver it.  It would be
interesting/instructive to see if the NEXRAD composites created by the
UPC on motherlode are received at Plymouth reliably at the same time
the MDR products are not.  If they are, it means that the problem is
not in the delivery mechanism, but, rather, in the product creation
mechanism.

>Surface hourly
>observations also show degradations from time to time each day.

This is more telling than the lack of MDR data.  Given this, I would
like to see you move up to a more current release of the LDM.  The
reason for the upgrade would be so you could start reporting realtime
statistics that would help us track your IDD data reception quality.

The most recent LDM release, LDM 5.2.2, is only available in source
form, so an upgrade would mean that you would have to build it and
not install a binary.

>Our
>NOAAPORT system proves much greater reliability. However, our building
>is being expanded and fully renovated and we are still trying to keep
>our NOAAPORT system running in that building despite the
>construction--something that does not always work out too well.

Cheers,

Tom
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