Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere's Total Precipitable Water
The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere's Total Precipitable Water is a product transitioned by SPoRT. Each card on this page represents a facet of that product. Items on green cards, marked as "Evaluation Product," are being used by at least one National Weather Service Forecast Office. Items on blue cards, marked as "Research," are still in development, or exist mainly for academic purposes. To see actual real-time data, click the link at the bottom right of the card.
For more information, see the CIRA Overview at the bottom of this page.
CIRA Products Overview
The total precipitable water products are developed by John Forsythe, Stanley Kidder, and Andrew Jones at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) as well as Sheldon Kusselson at NOAA NESDIS / Satellite Analysis Branch in Washington D.C. CIRA has partnered with the SPoRT Center to use SPoRT's expertise in transitioning products to the National Weather Service. This partnership has allowed CIRA to transition the two total precipitable water products to SPoRT's partner National Weather Service offices for evaluation and comment. A key component of this partnership is SPoRT's knowledge of transitioning products to the forecaster's native display environment, AWIPS. A major emphasis of CIRA is to create observation based products that can provide information in traditionally data poor regions, such as the oceans. This feature has made the total precipitable water products widely popular with SPoRT's coastal National Weather Service partners. Each product is available every six hours and has a 10 km resolution.
For more technical information on the CIRA TPW product, visit A Blended Satellite Total Precipitable Water Product.
For more information about the Colorado Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, visit CIRA Home Page.
