The National Weather Radar Testbed (Phased-Array)

TLDR: The National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT) is a 10-cm phased array radar for use in studying and developing faster and more accurate warning, analysis and forecast techniques for severe and hazardous weather as mentioned in this paper.

Abstract: A new national asset for weather radar research is now operational in Norman, Oklahoma. The National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT) is a 10-cm phased array radar for use in studying and developing faster and more accurate warning, analysis and forecast techniques for severe and hazardous weather. As reported at previous Interactive Information Processing Systems (IIPS) conferences, Forsyth, (2002, 2003), the NWRT was developed by a government/university/ industry team consisting of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, the Tri-Agencies’ (Department of Commerce, Defense & Transportation) Radar Operations Center (ROC), the United States Navy’s Office of Naval Research, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the University of Oklahoma’s Electrical Engineering Department and School of Meteorology, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, and the Federal Aviation Administration’s William J. Hughes Technical Center. The NWRT uses a converted Navy SPY-1 phased array antenna system, thus providing the first phased array radar available on a full-time basis to the meteorological research community. The NWRT became operational in September 2003, but problems with the velocity channel delayed initial data collection until May 2004. Our initial efforts have focused on ensuring that the data is of high quality. Qualitative comparisons with a WSR-88D (KTLX-Twin Lakes, OK) appear to be similar. In this paper, we will describe the data quality improvements, recent upgrades, future plans and present some examples of the first tornadic data set obtained with this new national facility.