Data Albums provide a one-stop-shop combining datasets from NASA, NWS, online new sources, and social media. Data Albums will help meteorologists better understand severe weather events to improve predictive models. Developed a new ontology for severe weather based off current hurricane Data Album and selected relevant NASA datasets for inclusion

Bakare, Rohan

Basyal, Sabin

Conover, Helen

Greene, Ethan

Kulkarni, Ajinkya

Li, Xiang

Ramachandran, Rahul

Zavodsky, Bradley

NASA Technical Reports Server

 Meteorological products are used to refine search areas for NASA datasets and 
to determine the quality of pre-event forecasts 
 Products brought in include Public Severe Weather Outlook (PWO), Convective 
Outlooks, Convective Weather Watches, Mesoscale Discussions, and Storm 
Reports disseminated by the Storm Prediction Center (see Fig. 5)  
 
 
Constructing Data Albums for Significant Severe Weather Events 
Ethan Greene1, Bradley Zavodsky2, Rahul Ramachandran2, Ajinkya Kulkarni3, Xiang Li3,  
Rohan Bakare3, Sabin Basyal3, & Helen Conover3 
1Mitchell College; New London, CT 
2NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center; Huntsville, AL 
3Information Technology and Systems Center/University of Alabama in Huntsville; Huntsville, AL 
Meteorological Datasets 
Why Do We Need Data Albums? 
 Important for generating case studies to enable researchers to 
improve prediction of convective thunderstorms that may result 
in damaging wind, hail, lightning, flooding and tornadoes. 
 “One-stop shop” for information and data related to a specific 
science topic or event, such as severe weather events 
 Links relevant data files from different instruments, online 
searches, news reports, official storm summaries, pictures, 
background information, damages, deaths, and injuries 
 Aggregated data are organized in ways that can aid in the 
discovery of new trends through exploration 
 Existing hurricane Data Album (Figs. 1 & 2) modified for severe 
weather 
Ontology Development  
 An ontology is a structured model of a specific topic showing key concepts and 
the relationships between them (Fig. 4) 
 Can be thought of as similar to organizing the animal kingdom by phylum, 
species, etc.; however, instead using severe weather event keywords organized 
in the hierarchy 
NASA Datasets 
 NASA collects many different Earth Science observations both from satellite 
and field campaigns for ground validation, which are stored in a clearinghouse 
called ECHO 
 Only a small percentage of the datasets are relevant to meteorology and the 
measurement of severe weather phenomena 
 Appropriate NASA datasets were selected based on their relevance to the 
severe weather phenomena for inclusion in a                                                                                      
severe weather Data Album (Tables 1 & 2) 
 Using the ontology and geolocation information                                                                                  
in the SPC products; only the relevant NASA                                                                         
data are included in the Data Album 
Social Media Archive 
 Massive source of online data through news outlets and social media for 
investigating severe weather events 
 YouTube Videos, Facebook, national and local news feeds online and recorded 
news broadcasts, Twitter, Flickr 
Figure 4:  Cmap brainstorm tree used to create 
the formal ontology 
Noesis 2.0  
 Open source, reusable aggregation software, which incorporates 
a variety of current web aggregation concepts to pull together 
data from:  
 Relevant NASA datasets are introduced through the Earth Observing 
System (EOS) Clearinghouse (ECHO; “2” in Fig. 3) 
 Web-based information from various online data formats, such as PDF 
and HTML (“3” in Fig. 3) 
 Social media information such as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc. (“4” in 
Fig. 3) 
 
Figure 3.  Schematic of Noesis System used to create data albums 
Figure 1:  Navigation system and charting 
capabilities of  an ontology driven data 
album for hurricane case studies.  
Figure 2: Full screen capture of the data 
album for Tropical Storm Brett showing 
the relevant NASA datasets in a pinwheel 
Acknowledgements 
This work was funded by Steven Berrick at NASA HQ ,through a 
NASA ROSES ACCESS proposal , and  the  American Association 
for the Advancement of Science, which funded the lead author’s 
NASA internship. 
Severe Weather Data Album  
 Home page (Fig. 5 left): 
 Statistical overview of weather events binned by date 
 By clicking on the year, month, and day, users can “dig down” to 
investigate severe weather events from a particular date 
 Event page (Fig. 5 right): 
 Aids in answering the question:  “Was this a good forecast?” by 
providing forecast products and NASA datasets 
 Interactive map with storm reports overlaying convective outlooks 
detailing the  forecast process                                                                             
leading up to an event 
 Videos, pictures, and social media                                                                             
information during and after the                                                                                        
event  
 Based on date and location of                                                                   
convective outlook, all NASA data                                                                 
relevant to severe storms is linked                                                              
into the page 
Figure 5:  Home page (left) and event page (right) for a widespread severe weather 
event on 3-4 April 2011. 
Instrument Relevant Measurement 
AMSU-A T, RH profiles 
AIRS T, RH profiles 
AMSR-E Precipitation, WV 
TRMM Rain Rate 
LIS Total Lightning 
MLS Aura T, RH, cloud ice 
OLS Moonlit clouds 
VIIRS Clouds 
CrIS T, RH profiles 
Campaign Location Date Relevance 
Light Precipitation 
Validation 
Experiment (LPVEx) 
Finland Sept.-
Dec. 
2010 
High latitude 
precipitation 
Mid-latitude 
Continental 
Convective Clouds 
Experiment (MC3E) 
Oklahoma April- 
May  
2011 
Convective 
precipitation 
Iowa Flood Study 
(IFloodS) 
Iowa May-Jun. 
2013 
Heavy precipitation 
Table 1:  Recent NASA field campaigns relevant to severe weather 
Table 2:  NASA satellite data relevant 
to severe weather  Data Albums provide a one-stop-shop  combining datasets 
from NASA, NWS, online new sources, and social media 
 Data Albums will help meteorologists better understand 
severe weather events to improve predictive models 
 Developed a new ontology for severe weather based off 
current hurricane Data Album 
 Selected relevant NASA datasets for inclusion in Data Album 
Summary 
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140008745 2019-08-29T13:56:21+00:00Z


Constructing Data Albums for Significant Severe Weather Events

There is need in the research community for weather-related case studies to improve prediction of and recovery after convective thunderstorms that produce damaging winds, hail, and tornadoes. One of the largest continuing challenges in any Earth Science investigation is the discovery of and access to useful science content from the increasingly large volumes of available Earth Science data. The Information Technology and Systems Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville has developed a software system called Noesis 2.0 that can be used to produce Data Albums for weather events relevant to NASA Earth Science researchers. Noesis is an Internet search tool that combines relevant storm research, pictures and videos of an event or event aftermath, web pages containing news reports and official storm summaries, background information about damage, injuries, and deaths, and NASA datasets from field campaigns and satellites into a "one-stop shop" database. The Data Album concept has been previously applied to hurricane cases from 2010 to present. The objective of this paper is to extend that Hurricane Data Album concept to focus on development of an ontology for significant severe weather to aid in selecting appropriate NASA datasets for inclusion in a severe weather Data Album. Recent severe weather events in Moore and El Reno, Oklahoma will be analyzed as an example of how these events can be incorporated into a Data Album

Constructing Data Albums for Significant Severe Weather Events 
 
Ethan Greene
1
, Bradley Zavodsky
2
, Rahul Ramachandran
3
, Ajinkya Kulkarni
3
, Xiang Li
3
, Rohan 
Bakare
3
, Sabin Basyal
3
, Helen Conover
3 
 
1
Mitchell College; New London, CT 
2
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center; Huntsville, AL 
3
Information Technology and Systems Center/University of Alabama in Huntsville; Huntsville, 
AL 
 
 There is need in the research community for weather-related case studies to improve 
prediction of and recovery after convective thunderstorms that produce damaging winds, hail, 
and tornadoes.  One of the largest continuing challenges in any Earth Science investigation is the 
discovery of and access to useful science content from the increasingly large volumes of 
available Earth Science data.  The Information Technology and Systems Center at the University 
of Alabama in Huntsville has developed a software system called Noesis 2.0 that can be used to 
produce Data Albums for weather events relevant to NASA Earth Science researchers.  Noesis is 
an Internet search tool that combines relevant storm research, pictures and videos of an event or 
event aftermath, web pages containing news reports and official storm summaries, background 
information about damage, injuries, and deaths, and NASA datasets from field campaigns and 
satellites into a “one-stop shop” database. The Data Album concept has been previously applied 
to hurricane cases from 2010 to present.  The objective of this paper is to extend that Hurricane 
Data Album concept to focus on development of an ontology for significant severe weather to 
aid in selecting appropriate NASA datasets for inclusion in a severe weather Data Album.  
Recent severe weather events in Moore and El Reno, Oklahoma will be analyzed as an example 
of how these events can be incorporated into a Data Album. 
 
To be presented at:  30
th
 Conference on Environmental Information Processing Technologies at 
the 94
th
 Annual American Meteorological Society Meeting in Atlanta, GA, 2-6 February 2014. 
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140007323 2019-08-29T13:50:36+00:00Z


Constructing Data Albums for Significant Severe Weather Events

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