88th Annual Meeting (20-24 January 2008)

Wednesday, 23 January 2008: 11:15 AM
Terminal Doppler Weather Radar for NWS Operations: Phase 3 Update
207 (Ernest N. Morial Convention Center)
Michael J. Istok, NOAA/NWS, Silver Spring, MD; and A. D. Stern, R. E. Saffle, B. R. Klein, N. Shen, Y. Song, Z. Wang, W. M. Blanchard, and B. Bumgarner
Poster PDF (1.6 MB)
After a couple of years of testing and evaluation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) has begun full scale deployment of the Supplemental Product Generator (SPG). The SPG is based on the successful open-systems Radar Product Generator (RPG) but is customized to accept and process radar data from non-NWS systems such as the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR). The 10 prototype deployment systems have generated products compatible with the NWS Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) and have been credited with providing valuable supplemental data for the NWS forecast and warning programs. During the last year, these SPG's have been upgraded to build 2 of the processing system, allowing for full resolution products and a subset of algorithm-based products to be supplied to forecasters. The products and specifics about SPG build 2 were documented in an AMS paper at the 2007 Annual Meeting.

During the fall of 2007, the NWS was busy deploying SPG's to access TDWR weather radar data from the remaining 35 radars. This paper will provide details about the full deployment phase of the SPG. In addition, significant progress has been made toward the implementation of a full suite of advanced, algorithm-based products which will be included with the deployment of SPG build 3. Storm analysis products, derived reflectivity products and precipitation-based products will be described both in text and graphic examples.

While the SPG continues its evolutionary development, so does the TDWR. Information will be provided about the deployment of the rehosted Radar Data Acquisition (RDA) component of the TDWR as well as proposed changes to its scanning strategies. Finally, this paper will provide an outlook toward future SPG plans and enhancements involving data from the TDWR and other FAA radars.

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