AORCviz User Guide

What is AORCviz?

AORCviz is an interactive visualization tool for exploring NOAA's Analysis of Record for Calibration (AORC) v1.1 dataset — a high-resolution (1 km), hourly gridded meteorological dataset covering the continental United States from 1979 to the available record (updates every year).

Quick Start

1
Set your bounding box — Choose a center location and box size (km), or use one of the preset buttons (Austin, Houston, etc.). You can also click "Click Map to Set" to pick a center directly on the map anywhere over CONUS.
2
Select variables — Choose one or more layers (Precipitation, Temperature, Wind, etc.) from the Layers panel. You can overlay up to 3 variables with different opacities.
3
Choose a date range — Enter start/end dates, or click a notable event preset (e.g., Hurricane Harvey 2017). For climatological analysis, switch to Multi-Year Seasonal mode.
4
Click "Fetch Spatial Data" — The aggregated map will render. Switch to the Time Slider tab to animate hourly timesteps.

Map Features

1
Click any grid cell on the map to view an hourly time series chart for that location. The pop-up includes a download link for the data.
2
Time Slider — After fetching data, switch to the Time Slider tab. Use the slider or play button to animate through each hourly timestep.
3
Export — Download your results as a PNG figure or as a NetCDF file for further analysis.

Analysis Modes

Date Range — Aggregate a variable over a specific date range. Great for event analysis.

Multi-Year Seasonal — Compare the same calendar window across many years. For example, all Mays from 2000–2024, or summer (JJA) climatology.

Available Variables

Precipitation (mm)

Temperature (K)

Specific Humidity (kg/kg)

Downward Longwave/Shortwave Radiation (W/m²)

Surface Pressure (Pa)

Wind Speed & Direction (m/s) — Derived from U/V components

Toggle between Metric and Imperial units using the Unit System buttons in the sidebar.

Tips

Larger bounding boxes (500+ km) and longer date ranges take more time to load from S3. You can start small and expand as needed.

The Time Slider caches up to 62 days of hourly data. Beyond 62 days time period, this feature is not available.

Overlay multiple variables with different opacities to compare patterns — e.g., precipitation with wind speed.

AORC
AORCviz
NOAA · AORC v1.1 · 1 km · 250 km × 250 km · Austin, TX
TExUS Lab, Jackson School of Geosciences, UT Austin
API: checking…
s3://noaa-nws-aorc-v1-1-1km
250 km box
Created by Naveen Sudharsan (naveens@utexas.edu)
Aggregated Map
Time Slider
User Guide
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