Short-term Prediction Research
and Transition Center

Our Mission - Overview

The NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center seeks to accelerate the infusion of NASA Earth Science observations, data assimilation, and modeling research into NWS forecast operations and decision-making at the regional and local level. The program is executed in concert with other government, university, and private sector partners

The primary focus is on the regional scale and emphasizes forecast improvements on a time scale of 0-24 hours. Because of this, the research to operations activities at the Center are complementary to that of the NASA/NOAA/DoD Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA) whose focus is on longer term and larger scale forecast improvements.

An overview of the SPoRT program can be found at http://meted.ucar.edu/npoess/sport/

SPoRT provides real-time data and products to 6 NWS Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) primarily in the southeast U.S. Currently, the SPoRT products are made available to these WFOs via ftp protocols where it is processed by local office servers and ingested directly into the local AWIPS system. In this way, the forecasters have access to the unique NASA products directly in their decision support systems like any other data stream. Near term changes to the data dissemination process will send the SPoRT data to the NWS Southern Region servers (in Fort Worth) via LDM protocols for subsequent delivery to any offices in the region.

The key to the success of the SPoRT program lies in its customer interaction. SPoRT works with local forecasters to understand forecast issues and develops techniques that directly address them. In this way, all parties have a direct vested interest in achieving a solution. Potential solutions are refined in a test-bed environment at the SPoRT Center, and then validated and benchmarked before transitioning the process to the operational environment. An assessment of the forecast impact is also made at that time. Forecaster training on the new capability is provided via "science sharing" sessions with the various offices.