Guidelines for Using Color to Depict Meteorological Information: IIPS Subcommittee for Color Guidelines

Abstract

Color has a long history of use for visually communicating weather information; however, the mapping of colors to meteorological features has been dictated, for the most part, by common practice and has remained undocumented throughout the history of weather cartography. With the current proliferation of interactive workstations targeted for weather analysis and forecasting duties, the time is ripe for reaching a consensus on a color palette for depicting the most common weather features. To this end, the American Meteorological Society IIPS (Interactive Information and Processing Systems) Subcommittee for Color Guidelines was formed to poll the meteorological community to determine the most commonly used sets of color assignments that are used in depicting meteorological information. The subcommittee accomplished this mission by 1) soliciting input from institutions expected to have a significant interest in weather feature color assignments, 2) searching for commonality among the different color palettes currently used by the community, and 3) developing a common palette of colors along with specific color definitions. This article is the product of the subcommittee's initiative that documents the color guidelines and specifies the palette of colors.