An Exploration of the Features and Applications of the Java NEXRAD Project at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center

NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) acquires Weather Surveillance Radar, 1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) data from a national network of ~160 NWS, DOD and FAA sites. These are commonly referred to as Next-Generation Radars (NEXRAD). The NCDC archive contains over 1000 terabytes of NEXRAD volume scan (base) data, known as Level-II, and derived products, known as Level-III, dating back to 1991. The NCDC Java NEXRAD software provides tools to decode, visualize and export NEXRAD Radar data to multiple common scientific formats. This includes the NEXRAD Viewer and NEXRAD Data Exporter applications. The Viewer is a GIS-based interactive viewer while the Data Exporter creates geo-referenced vector and raster NEXRAD datasets, in formats such as Shapefile, Well-Known Text, ASCII GRID, NetCDF and GeoTIFF. By providing users with data in familiar formats, NEXRAD data is now accessible to a broader audience. Real-time data and batch processing are supported and the Java NEXRAD API allows full integration of the software into custom applications. One example application of the Java NEXRAD Tools is the NCDC Severe Weather Inventory, a geo-database containing the severe weather features (tornado, hail, mesocyclone, storm structure) for all NEXRAD data at NCDC. Other applications include the ability to create custom mosaics and composites from multiple NEXRAD products and the incorporation of NEXRAD data into a 3-dimensional GIS environment. These applications showcase the flexibility and scalability of the Java NEXRAD Tools software package.