The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) operates hundreds of aircraft surveillance radars around the nation in support of its mission of managing the U.S. air transportation system. The primary responsibility of these radars is to identify and track aircraft. However, a secondary byproduct of the radars' continuous scanning is the capturing of weather information. The National Weather Service (NWS), part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has partnered with the FAA to gain access to a number of different radar systems and has shown that their weather data can be a powerful supplementary tool for NWS forecasters for forecast and warning operations.

During the last several years, the NWS Systems Engineering Center (SEC) has developed a modification of the Weather Surveillance Radar – 1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) Radar Product Generator (RPG) to enable weather data from FAA radars to be ingested and processed to create products that can be transmitted to and integrated within the NWS Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS). To date, the NWS/SEC has developed such systems, termed Supplemental Product Generators (SPGs), for the Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR), the Air Route Surveillance Radar, Model 4 (ARSR-4) and the Airport Surveillance Radar, Model 11 (ASR-11).

During 2008, the NWS deployed SPG systems to NWS Weather Forecast Offices that are associated with the 45 TDWR systems. Development of SPGs for the ARSR-4 and ASR-11 radars has been completed, and these units are undergoing system testing with selected FAA sites.

This presentation will provide the latest information on the SPG program, including deployment status and the direction of future development. In addition, several success stories will be presented showing how the FAA weather radar data have enhanced NWS warning operations.