Marine and Environmental Systems
About Labs/Facilities at a Top Meteorology College
As a technological university, Florida Tech has excellent facilities compared to other
top meteorology colleges. One of the most important items for meteorology students looking to attend a top meteorology college is
access to computer labs. Florida Tech has a number of state-of-the-art labs on campus. The labs are open to any Florida Tech faculty, staff, or students, cannot be reserved, and never have classes held in
them! Nine labs (3 open computing labs and 6 multimedia labs) are scattered about campus. There
are several other labs across campus in addition to these – two of which are in the Department of Marine and Environmental Systems
(DMES)! One of these is a dedicated meteorology lab – originally on the second floor of the Link building but is now being relocated to
the third floor of Link (as part of the renovation of the building). The lab features 8 flat-screen panel dual-boot (Linux/PC) machines
– each loaded with (or has access to) the latest Unidata software.
Access to data streaming from a live LDM feed
ALL students have access to data streaming from our live LDM feed. Most of this data is fully accessible and can be viewed using the Unidata GUIs. Our meteorological data feed runs on a dedicated machine that is virtually mounted on the campus server. GEMPAK (affiliated with the National Weather Service AWIPS software) is also compiled on the campus server. This software is also used regularly, by faculty, in the multi-media classrooms here at Florida Tech. For those interested in high-end computing, Florida Tech sports a mulit-node cluster known as “Blue Shark”. Featuring a total of 576 processor cores, the machine is open to faculty and their students. Florida Tech IT support is outstanding – placing Florida Tech as one the top meteorology colleges.