Providing accurate guidance and life-saving capabilities

The National Security Applications Program at RAL has grown to include a combination of DOD, foreign, and private–industry projects. RAL’s objective is to improve meteorological support of homeland security needs through the use of new capabilities in high–resolution mesoscale modeling, short–term thunderstorm prediction, multi–dimensional integrated displays, numerical weather prediction and fine–scale regional and global climatology prediction. New technologies are in operational use at Army ranges (ATEC) and are being implemented in Washington, DC at the Pentagon, originally sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and later adopted by the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA).

While protecting the nation from deliberate acts is the goal of this work, an added benefit is improved ability to protect citizens from a toxic release caused by a natural disaster or an industrial or transportation accident. Lessons learned on these projects will also increase both our understanding and our ability to predict fine–scale urban weather.

National Security Applications Projects

Sensor Data Fusion

Sensor Data Fusion (SDF)
Urban Shield
Pentagon Shield

Climate and Human Health

Plague in Uganda
Coastal Modeling
Meningitis in Ghana

High Performance Computing for Operational Modeling

GPU Climate Laboratory
Network Attached Storage Topology
High Performance Clusters

Operational Numerical Weather Prediction

Large-Eddy Simulations and Microscale Modeling Applications
Land–surface modeling
Coastal modeling
Israeli Air Force
NYC Meteorology
Iraqi Freedom
Enduring Freedom
Wildfire Management
Army Test–Range Support
Wind–Power Prediction

High Resolution Climate Analysis and Prediction

Wind Farm Prospecting
Global Current-Climate Downscaling
Eastern Mediterranean Current-Climate Downscaling
Climate Downscaling for Hazardous Plume Transport
Defining Regional Climate for Army Ranges
Global Climatology Analysis Tool

Modeling Plumes of Hazardous Material

Sensor Data Fusion
Salt Lake City Olympics
Athens Olympics
Torino Olympics
Urban Shield
Joint Urban 2003
Bioaerosol Study
Meteorological Data Server
Boulder Fire Dept Support

Numerical Weather Prediction Research and Development

TAMDAR
Range-Scale Modeling - 4DWX
Future Combat Systems
Land-Atmosphere Interaction
DTRA Coastal Urban
Urban Meteorology
Improved Data Assimilation
Boundary-Layer Process that Affect Wind-Energy Production
Climatological analyses of the marine environment

Primary Contacts

• SWERDLIN, Scott | NSAP DIRECTOR | ph: 8378 | email: swerdlin
• BETANCOURT, Terri: | NSAP DEPUTY DIRECTOR | ph: 8489 | email: terrib