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

Abstract

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 humanresource intensive, costly, inefficient, and unreliable. In an attempt to begin addressing the long-term needs for WSR-88D base data archival, and in light of the compelling need for real time access to base data for use in a variety of applications, especially numerical weather prediction, 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 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. The initial test bed of six radars, located in and around Oklahoma, has been delivering real time base data since early 1999 with virtually no interruptions, and now is being expanded to include some 30 additional radars. We describe in this paper 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