NOAA's Meteorological Phased Array Radar Research Program

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has pioneered the development and application of high-performance meteorological radar for public weather warning and forecasting services. The current operational system, the dual-polarization WSR-88D weather surveillance radar, has led to significant capability enhancements, for example, increased accuracy and lead time for severe weather and flash flood warnings. This paper summarizes research to determine whether the eventual replacement for the WSR-88D should exploit rapidly maturing phased array radar (PAR) technology. Key benefits for the rapid, adaptive scanning so enabled have been identified and work continues to mature associated data processing and numerical weather prediction (NWP) assimilation techniques. In parallel, the considerable engineering challenges associated with meteorological PAR are being addressed through modeling, hardware demonstration and data analysis. The Advanced Technology Demonstrator (ATD) - an S-band, dual polarization PAR - is described in this paper. ATD puts NOAA in a position to fully expose operational benefits and substantially advance the technical readiness level of meteorological PAR.