FAA’s Weather and Radar Processor (WARP) Convective Storm Demonstration

The Stage 1 portion of the FAA’s WARP program was in the Seattle Air Route Traffic Control Center since the summer of 1999. Unfortunately, the Seattle area gets very little convective activity and especially severe activity. The FAA is conducting a demonstration the ability of WARP in conjunction with the Display System Replacement (DSR) to accurately display weather cells on the same glass as aircraft targets. The ability to see both displays in real-time and in the same scale permits air traffic controllers the opportunity to separate aircraft from potentially dangerous convective weather. In April and May of 2000, the FAA will install a Stage 1 WARP in the Ft. Worth Air Traffic Control Center and connect to 9 WSR-88D radar in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. These radar will form a mosaic that covers the area of responsibility of the Ft. Worth ARTCC. Once the entire system is deployed, adjoining WARP systems will feed data to provide at least two radar’s covering each spot within the CONUS. However, for the demonstration we will not have the indirect radar. Our offerings will briefly describe the demonstration, but we expect to focus on any instances of severe weather, hazardous weather diversions, and tactical aviation planning using the WARP/DSR displays.