Microburst Detection with NEXRAD AMDA

Microbursts and other severe wind-shear events present a serious safety concern to civilians and aircraft, particularly at low altitudes. In this work, the Automated Microburst Detection Algorithm (AMDA), an algorithm originally designed for wind-shear detection for the Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR-9), has been redesigned to enable wind-shear detection for the NWS Weather Surveillance Radar (WSR-88D) or NEXRAD. AMDA generates wind-shear detections out to 60 – 70 km range from each NEXRAD by grouping features extracted from reflectivity and radial velocity data. The performance of NEXRAD AMDA is assessed over a number of case days by comparing to human-categorized microbursts, as well as detections from the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) Microburst Detection Algorithm from selected sites where coverage of the two radars overlaps. Despite the longer NEXRAD scan intervals in observing the base reflectivity and radial velocity compared to TDWRs, it is shown here that NEXRAD AMDA generates reliable detections for both wet and dry microbursts. NEXRAD AMDA is planned to be released as part of the Open Radar Product Generator (ORPG) Build 15.

This work was sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration under Air Force Contract No. FA8721-05-C-0002. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government.