Thursday, 13 February 2003: 2:00 PM
NCDC the "One Stop Shop" for all WSR-88D Level II Data Services
The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) currently receives WSR-88D Doppler radar level II
(base) data from 120 NWS, 12 FAA and 26 DOD sites on 8mm exabyte tape or electronically.
The NCDC is partnering with the NWS Radar Operations Center, the National Severe Storms
Lab, the University of Oklahoma and UNIDATA on a project to move WSR-88D level II data
from all NEXRAD sites electronically, directly to the NCDC Mass Storage System. To date, 56
of the 158 WSR-88D sites are transmitting level II data in near real time to NCDC. Also, all data
prior to August 2000 archived on 8mm tape (77 thousand tapes) have been migrated to the
NCDC Mass Storage System. NCDC has truly become a “One Stop Shop” for WSR-88D radar
users. Direct digital access to level II and level III radar inventories, data, and visualization
software are available, at no cost to the user, via the NCDC radar resources web page. Large data
volume requests that, in the past, took weeks to months to disseminate are accessible in minutes
to hours. Plans for future user services include a web interfaced browsing tool to visualize data in
the radar inventories and building radar climatologies based on specific weather phenomena.
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