Weather Data Distribution in US Academia – College of DuPage & Chicago AMS 2025-09-24

Last month I gave a presentation at the College of DuPage and Chicago AMS to discuss what I feel is a critical topic that isn’t being talked about too much right now. We have relied heavily on what I’m calling the “LDM Paradigm” since the ’90s to move weather data around our world, and for a full generation it has served us well. But as our data needs increase and technologies improve, this current paradigm and its underlying hardware aren’t exactly cutting it anymore and the future of it has some uncertainty.

Referencing the maintainers of our current paradigm, NSF Unidata, as well as experts in the field both here and abroad, it looks like WIS 2.0 is where our world is headed, and I am excited for the opportunities that lay ahead even if we have some challenges to go along with it. I think it’ll be an interesting adventure.