Mitigating Ground Clutter Contamination in the WSR-88 D

The Anomalous-Propagation (AP) Clutter Mitigation Scheme (Kessinger et al. 2001) is being implemented within the Open Radar Product Generator (ORPG) (Saffle and Johnson 1998; Saffle et al. 2001) of the Weather Surveillance Radar–1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) of the National Weather Service (NWS). This scheme is designed to automatically identify and remove the AP ground clutter caused by atmospheric conditions favorable for refraction of the radar beam towards the surface. Removal of AP ground clutter is necessary because it is a contaminant within the radar base data fields that causes erroneous radarderived rainfall estimates within the WSR-88D precipitation processing subsystem (PPS; Fulton et al. 1998; O’Bannon 1998) as well as errors in interpretation.