2005 OAR Employee of the Year for Public Service: Dr. Bill Moninger
Dr. Bill Moninger in ESRL/GSD (formerly Forecast Systems Lab) was named 2005 OAR Employee of the Year for his effective and visionary quest to provide new sources of commercial aircraft data to benefit NOAA and the broader international community. These data are making a huge difference to the data sparse regions of the world and to the WMO Global Observing System. Dr. Moninger has shown a remarkable ability to forge coalitions between disparate groups and to ensure that access to the proprietary aircraft data does not violate the established agreements with the airline industry. He is the chief designer and developer of a flexible and powerful Web-based capability to display and monitor the performance of these data, which serves as the primary access point for quality-controlled aircraft data, as well as AMDAR data from many European and Asian air carriers. Dr. Moninger is also a key participant in the evaluation of the utility of TAMDAR meteorological data, which provides information in the middle troposphere from commuter aircraft, thereby filling a large data void left by commercial airliners. The National Weather Service uses weather data from these aircraft to supplement information from weather balloons and wind profilers, and these data have been shown to produce significant improvements in numerical weather prediction and resulting forecasts and warnings. These data are serving a broad spectrum of uses beyond those of the NWS, which extends from their international use in numerical prediction systems to the demonstrated improvement of regional air quality forecasts. The data quality control methods developed by Dr. Moninger are used operationally at Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center and are being implemented at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. His pivotal role in helping NOAA meet its mission to facilitate access to high quality aircraft data for such a wide range of applications, both internal to the agency as well as to a broad spectrum of national and international customers, is now applauded with the 2005 NOAA/OAR Employee of the Year Award for Public Service.
Contact information
Name: Bill Moninger
Tel: 303-497-6435
Bill.Moninger@noaa.gov