Information Technology Research (ITR): Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD)

每年在美国各地，洪水、龙卷风、冰雹、强风、闪电和冬季风暴造成数百人死亡，每年造成的经济损失超过130亿美元。僵化的信息技术框架无法适应天气研究独特的实时、按需和动态适应需求，因而阻碍了对气候变化的缓解。大气发现链接环境（LEAD）的基础是一系列相互连接的虚拟“网格环境”，使科学家和学生能够访问、准备、预测、管理、分析和可视化各种气象信息，而不受格式和物理位置的影响。LEAD的一个转变要素是分析工具、预测模型和数据存储库作为动态适应、按需系统的能力，这些系统可以根据不断变化的天气快速、自动地改变配置；根据手头的天气问题，立即响应用户的决定；引导远程观测系统优化数据收集和预报/预警质量。LEAD将允许研究人员、教育工作者和学生在比现在更现实、更实时的环境中运行大气模型和其他工具，加速研究成果向操作的转变，并首次将复杂的大气科学工具的教学效益带入高中课堂。它的能力将被整合到数十所大学和运筹学研究中心，这些中心将覆盖21,000名大学生、1800名教师和数百名操作从业者。

Each year across the United States, floods, tornadoes, hail, strong winds, lightning, and winter storms cause hundreds of deaths and result in annual economic losses of more than $13B. Their mitigation is stifled by rigid information technology frameworks that cannot accommodate the unique real time, on-demand, and dynamically-adaptive needs of weather research.Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD), the foundation of which is a series of interconnected virtual "Grid environments," allows scientists and students to access, prepare, predict, manage, analyze, and visualize a broad array of meteorological information independent of format and physical location. A transforming element of LEAD is the ability for analysis tools, forecast models, and data repositories to function as dynamically adaptive, on-demand systems that can change configuration rapidly and automatically in response to the evolving weather; respond immediately to user decisions based upon the weather problem at hand; and steer remote observing systems to optimize data collection and forecast/warning quality. LEAD will allow researchers, educators, and students to run atmospheric models and other tools in much more realistic, real time settings than is now possible, hasten the transition of research results to operations, and bring the pedagogical benefits of sophisticated atmospheric science tools into high school classrooms for the first time. Its capabilities will be integrated into dozens of universities and operational research centers that collectively reach 21,000 university students, 1800 faculty, and hundreds of operational practitioners.