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WDSS-II
WDSS-II provides a unique environment for quickly writing applications that can access real-time and archived data, do computations on that data and test the usefulness of derived information. WDSS-II has three components: (1) A suite of multi-sensor automated weather algorithms, (2) a 4D display for visualizing multi-sensor data and algorithm outputs to support weather forecasting and research, and (3) an application programming interface (API) library in C++ that supports algorithm development and visualization.
The WDSS-II infrastructure libraries provide easy and unified access to data not just from different radars but also from weather satellites, weather models, surface observations, lightning and other meteorological datasets. This provides for a great deal of flexibility for the algorithms developed using the infrastructure. The algorithms themselves use image processing, artificial intelligence and neural networks to provide automated analysis of weather events in real-time.
WDSS-II 2D Multi-Radar CONUS Composite Reflectivity
(multi-sensor QC ... smoothed/thresholded)
(click image for loop)
History of WDSS
The first version of WDSS was developed in the early 1990's, and was based on data from individual radars. The tornado and mesocyclone detection algorithms currently used in NWS operations were first implemented, tested and validated within the WDSS framework. Later, the implementation of Project CRAFT made possible development of new weather applications that treat the radars as parts of a network of observing platforms capable of transmitting real-time and archived data. WDSS-II was designed to provide the computing architecture for developing such applications. Researchers who create new weather applications using WDSS-II have access to real-time, high resolution data from radars anywhere in the country without having to be concerned with the underlying data management and networking protocols.
Current projects:
- Real-time and archive WSR-88D base data ingest project. NSSL researchers designed a prototype system for a nationwide direct digital ingest and archival of base data using existing network infrastructures at the National Climatic Data Center, the official U.S. archive of weather data.
- Investigation of radar data compression algorithms to make data available in real-time to universities and government researchers
- Creation of web-based browsing and data mining capabilities to examine and extract data
- Demonstrate the usefulness of real-time base data in numerical forecast models and decision-support systems
- Quality control of radar reflectivity data
- Using Google Earth, a free application that can run on inexpensive hardware, to share experimental severe weather products with other researchers and operational meteorologists for evaluation and feedback. A variety of multi-sensor severe weather products are generated by NSSL and shared with Google Earth users via the Internet. These products include spatially gridded fields of Vertically Integrated Liquid, Maximum Expected hail Size, tracks of circulations derived from Doppler velocity data, composite reflectivity, and 30 to 60 minute forecast reflectivity fields, among others.
The Real-time Applications and Display Development (RADD) group partners with the Severe Weather Warning Appplications and Technology Transfer (SWAT) group in NSSL's Warning Division to develop this technology.
