During 2004, the National Weather Service (NWS) will implement the operational distribution of Level II WSR-88D data from more than 125 sites to the National Centers for Environmental Prediction and to the National Climatic Data Center. Unidata will connect with this Level II network to provide these data to the university community. Unidata also provides the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) for displaying and analyzing Level II data.

The IDV is a freely available, Java(tm)-based tool for scientific visualization and analysis. With Level II data, users can create standard 2-D plots (e.g, PPI, RHI, CAPI) as well as 3-D views such as isosurfaces, sweep cones, and vertical and time-height cross sections. The IDV permits simultaneous display of Level II radar data with other forms of geoscience data, including satellite and Level III radar imagery, surface and upper air data, NWP model output, and wind profiler observations. The IDV can display, for example, profiler winds as 3-D wind barb staffs inside or next to adjacent Level II sweeps of velocity for comparison. Social data in GIS formats can be incorporated into the displays as well. The IDV has a computation facility built on the Jython language, permitting users to write complex analysis routines using Level II data and other meteorological data.

In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the IDV and its display and analysis capabilities related to Level II and other radar data.