CUNY CREST Institute Provides Storm Data to New York Metro Area

Posted on November 14, 2012

While the New York Metro regions recovers from Hurricane Sandy and prepares for the approaching winter season, scientists at CUNY CREST are using cutting edge technology to help explain, prepare, and inform the region in anticipation of the winter season.  The technology used by CUNY CREST generates real time regional pictures from hundreds of surface stations positioned on building rooftops across the New York Metro area as well as vertical profiling Doppler wind instruments that measure winds at heights up to 2 km above the surface of the earth. Dr. Mark Arend, CREST Scientist, explained “The real- time storm data collected from CUNY CREST’s radar wind profiler measured sustained wind speeds of 125 mi/hr at 1.65 km above the surface of the earth.”   The meteorological observations in and around The New York Metro Area are available through NYCMetNet, a web site hosted by CREST Institute’s Optical Remote Sensing Laboratory (http://nycmetnet.ccny.cuny.edu). Observations are updated every 15 minutes to better characterize meteorological conditions within the NYC urban environment. Surface observations consist, in part, of near real-time atmospheric pressure, relative humidity, temperature, wind direction, wind speed, rain rate, and total rain accumulation measurements at building-top sites throughout the NYC Metro Region.