Thursday, 13 February 2003: 2:30 PM
NEXRAD Product Improvement—Expanding Science Horizons
The NEXRAD tri-agencies (Department of Commerce, National Weather Service; the Department of Defense, Air Force Weather Agency; the Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration) have established the NEXRAD Product Improvement (NPI) Program as a long-term activity to steadily improve WSR-88D science and technology. The Radar Product Generation subsystem has been replaced with open systems compliant software and hardware (ORPG), and a similar effort to replace the Radar Data Acquisition subsystem is underway (ORDA). These system upgrades will enable the operational implementation of new scientific applications and signal processing techniques to improve the forecast and warning missions of the NEXRAD agencies. Further, the NPI program is currently working on the potential implementation of dual polarization, and on integration of weather data from several FAA radar systems. An additional NPI effort is focused on developing tools to improve the process of developing, testing, implementing and maintaining the software involved with application enhancements to the WSR-88D. This paper explores the expanding opportunities for development and implementation of new radar science and techniques intended for the WSR-88D.
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