An international task team, consisting of both radar experts and climate specialists, has defined requirements for radar data to be used for climate monitoring.
Weather Radar Data Requirements for Climate Monitoring
Please download the full report here.
Processing historical data is an effort of considerable manpower that requires careful planning. It is suggested to follow the general recommendation for data rescue and harmonization and to provide special documentation. It is recommended that the rescue projects produce and save Level 2 data, which allows future reanalysis with newest algorithms.
The most essential parameter is radar reflectivity, dBZ, to be saved as 3-dimensional volumes (known as Level 2 data – note, the definitions for ground based radars are different from those used for satellites). For essential metadata, requirements for climate do not differ from other applications, but it is essential to save the history of metadata related to different measurement configurations over the years.
In a survey executed during 2017, several WMO members reported decade-long archives allowing access for researchers. It is recommended, as a next goal, to establish an international portal to allow harmonized access to radar data, metadata and documentation.
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| gcos_223_en.pdf1.03 MB | 1.03 MB |
