NOAA Provides Access to High-Resolution Radar Data

Researchers and meteorologists will soon have easier access to high-resolution data from the entire national network of NEXRAD Doppler weather radars. An experiment called CRAFT, the Collaborative Radar Acquisition Field Test project, has shown that the data can be delivered over the Internet in near real time to users.

High quality radar data are much in demand by researchers to develop better forecasting tools, by private meteorologists to produce specialized forecasts for their clients, and by government forecasters to provide earlier and more accurate forecasts and warnings of severe weather.

Researchers from NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., are part of a coalition that implemented CRAFT. Twice NOAA's High Performance Computing and Communications Program, a longtime supporter of the project, has recognized CRAFT, for the “Best Use of Advanced Networks” at the NOAATECH 2002 and again more recently at NOAATECH 2004 for “Best Technology Transfer to Operations.”

NSSL is now helping the NOAA National Weather Service take steps to expand CRAFT. The project has proven real-time access to high-resolution data from multiple radars is not only possible, but relatively inexpensive, said Tim Crum, NWS NEXRAD Operations Focal Point with the NOAA Radar Operations Center in Norman, Okla.

CRAFT takes advantage of existing high performance networking capabilities and other recent technological advances.

“The use of Abilene, also known as Internet2, the country's premier high-speed research network, allows the National Weather Service to deliver significantly greater amounts of high quality data to a geographically diverse group of users, such as the university and research community,” said Guy Almes, chief engineer for the Abilene Network. This task was previously not possible because of bandwidth and technology limitations.

The new system offers a viable alternative to the current practice of using 8-millimeter tapes for archiving the nation's high-resolution radar data, cutting delivery time from months to seconds, increasing the amount of information saved and decreasing processing costs.

When Doppler weather radars were installed nationwide as part of the National Weather Service modernization in the 1980s, the voluminous, yet valuable data the radar network produced could not be archived.

“It is now possible to not only archive the data, but to deliver the data in real time using the Internet,” said Kevin Kelleher, deputy director of the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla. “This new system will facilitate ground-breaking advances by a variety of radar data users.”

The initial test bed for CRAFT, established in Oklahoma and Texas in 1998 by Kelvin Droegemeier at the University of Oklahoma in collaboration with the National Weather Service and National Severe Storms Laboratory, included six Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) radars commonly known as NEXRAD, Kelleher said. Just prior to its adoption by the NWS, CRAFT had grown to support over 62 radars located all over the United States. The broad geographic distribution helped provide an evaluation of overall reliability, network efficiency and real time ingest on a national level. Currently there are over 80 radars transmitting data into the CRAFT network.

“CRAFT has been a great example of an effective partnership in the transfer of technology from the government to the university and private sector,” Kelleher said.

Radar data are a vital component in the services provided by The Weather Channel, said Raymond J. Ban, Weather Channel executive vice president for meteorology science and strategy.

"Weather services in the United States are among the best in the world and the result of a unique public/private partnership,” Ban said. “The CRAFT project has provided our partnership with an effective method of providing the citizens of the U.S. the maximum benefit on the investment they have made in the nation's Doppler radar network. Near real-time distribution of the high resolution Doppler data to the partnership helps ensure that the nation receives the most timely and accurate weather information our science and technology can provide.”

The National Weather Service plans to expand CRAFT to the 121 NWS WSR-88D radars (within the contiguous U. S.) and 11 select Department of Defense WSR-88D radars in the continental United States, Crum said. The expansion will implement the technology nationwide to electronically collect and transmit the data in real time to the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., for archival. So called “Level II” base data, which include high-resolution reflectivity, velocity and spectrum width, will be transported to users over a combination of the NWSNet, the Internet2 network, and the commercial Internet.

Current plans call for NOAA to use the Local Data Manager (LDM) software technology from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Unidata program to deliver the data to sites across the network, said Linda Miller, external liaison for Unidata.

Crum said the high-resolution radar data will be useful to many different groups. National Weather Service forecasters, for example, will use the high-resolution data to initialize computer forecast models, which will help them provide more accurate forecasts to the public. Government and university researchers can use the data to develop better radar algorithms and other tools for forecasters.

The data will have a climatological use as well, according to Stephen Del Greco, NEXRAD program manager for NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, a key partner in the project.

“For the first time, we'll have a more reliable flow of data that people can use in real time or from the near real-time archives,” Del Greco said. “When coupled with modern data delivery techniques and visualization tools provided by the National Climatic Data Center, access and use of this data will be easier and more user friendly.” Several tools to access and display the Level II data are already available at the NCDC website.

In addition, Crum believes the availability of Level II data will create a growth area for private weather companies.

“The National Weather Service is working to ensure this data is readily available to private sector users for development of their own value added products,” Crum said. “This project is another example of the NWS partnering with the private sector to keep the public better informed about how weather can affect them, and to better manage the economic impacts of weather.”

Phil Cragg, lead engineer for the project at the NWS Office of Science and Technology in Silver Spring, Md., said the National Weather Service data collection network will be implemented in a two-phased approach.

Details on the NWS distribution plans for the Level II data will be announced in early January 2004. It is expected the data from all the previously mentioned radars will start to become available in early 2004, initially to the government and university communities, followed by the private sector.

The CRAFT project has been jointly led by the National Severe Storms Laboratory, National Weather Service and the University of Oklahoma Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms. CRAFT partners include the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, the UCAR's Unidata program, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratories and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Related Web sites:

Project updates:
http://www.roc.noaa.gov/NWS_Level_2/

National Severe Storms Laboratory:
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov

National Weather Service:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov

National Climatic Data Center:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov