The Spaceport Weather Data Archive provides a fully searchable database of weather data gathered at Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Weather data includes wind, temperature, and humidity data from a surface meteorological tower network; upper air soundings from both weather balloons and radar wind profilers; and data from the extensive rain gauge network. Not only can the user easily retrieve data and download it, but the user can also view graphically the weather data on a map overlay. For example, the user can enter search criteria to view all lightning strikes ending at a particular date/time, and graphically see the lightning strikes color-coded based on elapsed time for the prior seven hours. A unique feature of the software is the capability to invoke an automated playback for cloud-to-ground lightning events on a geographic overlay for a selected date and time interval.

This innovation separates the public-facing Web application from the KSC/CCAFS internal Web application software, and has eliminated ftp downloads. The look and feel has been designed to be similar to current state-of-the-art weather research Web sites, and provides common, standardized interfaces for the various weather data types. The archive has been designed for the handling of new data for automated quality control (empty files, duplicate data, reasonableness verification, and validity checks).

The data are updated every 60 minutes for certain instruments, and as frequently as every 15 minutes for others. Data is available 24/7 over a publicly accessible Web site. The data is used by researchers to validate launch commit constraint criteria, and to ensure safe operations for workers at KSC. The site provides links to technical publications and other resources, and allows data to be downloaded for further investigation.

This work was done by Francis Merceret and Jennifer Wilson of Kennedy Space Center; and Barbara Kaysen, Philip Gemmer, Timothy Ritter, Daniel Strohschein, Ryan Arnold, Evan Bonnett, Jothimani Nallasamy, Aldwin Ebuen, Daniel Krainas, Terence Tully, and Brice Crossley of Abacus Technology Corporation. KSC-13803