Operational Weather radar in the United States : Progress and opportunity

Abstract The NEXRAD operational system consisting of a network of WSR—88D radars is now operational within the 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico and Guam. This technology has been enthusiastically received by weather forecasters in all regions and climatic regimes of the country. Improvements in short—term weather forecasting and nowcasting have resulted, but the potential for further improvement is also great. Many of the advantages of the system are associated with its quantitative and precise digital data, but problems related to accuracy of precipitation estimation, contamination of Doppler radar products by ground clutter, and the range folding of velocity data all deserve attention. These problems and others are being addressed by the Operational Support Facility of the triagencies: the National Weather Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Department of Defense. Further improvements to the system, in both hardware and software, will greatly enhance its capabilities for the future. T...

[1]  N. A. Crook.  Sensitivity of Moist Convection Forced by Boundary Layer Processes to Low-Level Thermodynamic Fields , 1996 .

[2]  Alexander V. Ryzhkov,et al.  Assessment of Rainfall Measurement That Uses Specific Differential Phase , 1996 .

[3]  P. Bieringer,et al.  A Comparison of Tornado Warning Lead Times with and without NEXRAD Doppler Radar , 1996 .

[4]  Robert E. Saffle,et al.  An Update on the NEXRAD Program and Future WSR-88D Support to Operations , 1998 .

[5]  R. Rinehart,et al.  Three-dimensional storm motion detection by conventional weather radar , 1978, Nature.

[6]  Dong-Jun Seo,et al.  An Intercomparison Study of NEXRAD Precipitation Estimates , 1996 .

[7]  Dusan S. Zrnic,et al.  Weather Radar Polarimetry-Trends Toward Operational Applications , 1996 .

[8]  B. Macpherson,et al.  A latent heat nudging scheme for the assimilation of precipitation data into an operational mesoscale model , 1997 .

[9]  Jothiram Vivekanandan,et al.  Boundary Layer Clear-Air Radar Echoes: Origin of Echoes and Accuracy of Derived Winds , 1994 .

[10]  James W. Wilson,et al.  Thunderstorm Initiation, Organization, and Lifetime Associated with Florida Boundary Layer Convergence Lines , 1997 .

[11]  Lans P. Rothfusz,et al.  An Overview of NWS Weather Support for the XXVI Olympiad , 1998 .

[12]  Richard L. Thompson,et al.  Nationwide comparisons of hail size with WSR-88D vertically integrated liquid water and derived thermodynamic sounding data , 1998 .

[13]  Vico E. Baer,et al.  The Transition from the Present Radar Dissemination System to the NEXRAD Information Dissemination Service (NIDS) , 1991 .

[14]  Peter S. Ray,et al.  Initialization of a modeled convective storm using Doppler radar-derived fields , 1992 .

[15]  James W. Wilson,et al.  Initiation of Convective Storms at Radar-Observed Boundary-Layer Convergence Lines , 1986 .

[16]  R. W. Russell,et al.  RADAR-OBSERVED ’’FINE LINES‘‘ IN THE OPTICALLY CLEAR BOUNDARY LAYER: REFLECTIVITY CONTRIBUTIONS FROM AERIAL PLANKTON AND ITS PREDATORS , 1997 .

[17]  P. Meischner,et al.  Advanced weather radar systems in Europe : The COST 75 action , 1997 .

[18]  Stephen J. Thomas,et al.  A Real-Time North American Forecast at 10-km Resolution with the Canadian MC2 Meso-LAM , 1999 .

[19]  P. Glitto,et al.  A Comparison of WSR-88D Storm Total Precipitation Performance during Two Tropical Systems following Changes to the Multiplicative Bias and Upper Reflectivity Threshold , 1997 .

[20]  K. A. Browning,et al.  The Determination of Kinematic Properties of a Wind Field Using Doppler Radar , 1968 .

[21]  Steven A. Amburn,et al.  VIL Density as a Hail Indicator , 1997 .

[22]  G. Foote,et al.  Determination of the Boundary Layer Airflow from a Single Doppler Radar , 1990 .

[23]  Joseph R. Bocchieri,et al.  National Weather Service Warning Performance Based on the WSR-88D. , 1994 .

[24]  Venkatramani Balaji,et al.  Remote Sensing of Hail with a Dual Linear Polarization Radar , 1986 .

[25]  Juanzhen Sun,et al.  Wind and Thermodynamic Retrieval from Single-Doppler Measurements of a Gust Front Observed during Phoenix II , 1994 .

[26]  Cynthia K. Mueller,et al.  Nowcasts of Thunderstorm Initiation and Evolution , 1993 .