Project CRAFT: A Test Bed for Demonstrating the Real Time Acquisition and Archival of WSR-88D Base (Level II) Data

The US National Weather Service (NWS) recently completed the installation of 120 WSR-88D (NEXRAD) Doppler weather radars, concurrent with which was the deployment of 26 Department of Defense and 12 Federal Aviation Administration radars. Although these systems originally were designed without archival capability for the full-volume, full-precision Level II (base) data, an interim solution, based upon 8 mm tape technology, eventually was implemented. Since 1992, the National Climatic Data Center has been archiving the data tapes and using the same media to provide base data to the national community. Although an innovative and satisfactory solution several years ago, the tape system is extremely human-resource intensive, costly, inefficient, and unreliable.

In an attempt to begin addressing the long-term needs for WSR-88D base data archival as well as the provision of base data in real time, the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms at the University of Oklahoma joined forces in 1998 with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the University of Washington, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, and the WSR-88D Operational Support Facility to establish the Collaborative Radar Acquisition Field Test (CRAFT). The principal goal of Project CRAFT is to demonstrate the real time compression and internet-based transmission of WSR-88D base data from multiple radars with a view toward nationwide implementation

This presentation provides a brief overview of the motivation behind Project CRAFT as well as the technical implementation strategy and potential impacts on research, operations, and education. Additionally, we discuss opportunities for including other surveillance radar systems, especially those, as well as the role of Abilene and Internet2 in taking the CRAFT concept to the entire NEXRAD networkionally, we discuss opportunities for including other surveillance radar systems, especially those, as well as the role of Abilene and Internet2 in taking the CRAFT concept to the entire NEXRAD network.

Presenter Information operated by the Federal Aviation Administration:

Prof. Kelvin K. Droegemeier School of Meteorology and Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms University of Oklahoma Sarkeys Energy Center, Suite 1110 100 East Boyd Street Norman, OK 73019 Phone: 405-325-0453 Fax: 405-325-7614 E-mail: kkd@ou.edu