3D-Rapic—The Australian radar visualisation system

The paper profiles 3D-Rapic, which is the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's (ABoM's) primary volumetric radar visualisation application. 3D-Rapic allows forecasters to analyse volumetric radar data through both plan views and interactively generated vertical cross sections derived from the volumetric data. Continuous panning and zooming allows the user to examine data detail quickly and easily with cursor readouts providing location and data value information. Display products available include PPI, RHI, CAPPI, merged PPI, 3DTops, VIL, raw rainfall accumulations and radar derived rainfall products. Various overlay products are supported such as cell tracking, radar algorithm output, observations and lightning data. Vector map layers and texture mapped 2D and 3D terrain data maps are used. Multiple radar display windows allow concurrent display of multiple radars and products. Correlated cursor data, pan, zoom, and vertical cross section position in real time is supported between windows for neighbouring radars. Storm relative radial velocity based on manual settings or cell track data is available as well as a cursor radial velocity value relative mode.

3D-Rapic incorporates comprehensive communications infrastructure to allow data direct from multiple radars or from radar data server peers to be collected, with support for fallback in the event of server or link failures. 3D-Rapic natively uses the ABoM's Rapic format, however support for event driven reading of Nexrad format data has recently been added. Database infrastructure allows for review of historical radar data. 3D-Rapic has been designed for Linux PC platforms only and delivers excellent performance on typical current specification PCs equipped with Nvidia graphics adaptors.