On the development of a multi-algorithm radar data quality control system at the Naval Research Laboratory

A radar data quality control system is being developed for the real-time, continuously updateable NOWCAST system at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL-NOWCAST) in Monterey, California. NRL has developed its own new radar quality control algorithms, and is also working with MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Severe Storms Laboratory in the United States to obtain, adapt, integrate, test and install various types of recently-developed radar quality control algorithms for use with NRL-NOWCAST. These algorithms have recently demonstrated success at distinguishing between precipitation, ground and anomalous propagation clutter, sea clutter, insects, birds and constant power function artifacts. The goal is to test the performance of all of these algorithms on a series of archived data sets simultaneously in order to determine the optimal combination for future use with NRL-NOWCAST. NRL-NOWCAST ingests full-resolution Doppler radar data from both the Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) network and US Department of Defense radars, such as the Supplemental Weather Radar (SWR) at Navy shore sites. A brief overview of the algorithms will be presented at the conference along with examples of their test results and comparisons derived from archived WSR-88D and SWR data.