Automated Storm-based Scheduling at the National Weather Radar Testbed Phased Array Radar

The National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT) Phased Array Radar (PAR) provides a platform to develop and demonstrate adaptive scanning techniques unique to electronically steered antennas. Free from the mechanical limitations of conventional rotating dish antenna radars, techniques have been developed to focus scanning on regions containing severe weather. Using a cluster identification algorithm, candidate storm clusters are identified from reflectivity data, at either a constant elevation angle or height. The azimuth sector defining their lateral boundaries are used to define the scan sector and the range of the cluster gate with the highest reflectivity is used by a range-based volume coverage pattern (VCP) algorithm to define the scan properties.

Until recently, storm selection has been performed by a human operator. Work is currently underway to automate the process by replacing the human operator with an algorithm that utilizes selected storm cluster properties to identify candidate storms and schedule them for focused scanning. This paper provides more details about the storm scheduling process and how selected cluster properties can be used to identify candidate storms clusters.