Final performance evaluation of the Automated Lightning Detection and Reporting System (ALDARS)

The Automated Lightning Detection and Reporting System (ALDARS) is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) program for detecting and reporting the location of thunderstorms within 30 n.m. of an airport served by Automated Surface Observing Systems and Automated Weather Observing Systems (ASOS/AWOS). Weather reports from these automated systems are intended for operational use within the aviation community, although many other sectors of society benefit from the reports. ALDARS receives commercially available lightning data provided by Global Atmospherics, Incorporated (GAI) through the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) and processes these data for inclusion into the surface weather observations generated by ASOS/AWOS stations. To demonstrate proper operation of the ALDARS and ASOS software prior to upgrading ASOS stations throughout the CONUS, an operational test and evaluation program was conducted jointly by the FAA and National Weather Service (NWS) in the spring of 1999. This program was to confirm the operation of ALDARS at seven ASOS test sites by comparing the ALDARS data received and the METAR reports generated at the test sites with similar data generated independently by both a separate test ALDARS system and a post-analysis of the NLDN data archive by an ALDARS-based algorithm. The results confirmed proper operation of ALDARS at each ASOS test site.