CURRENT PROJECTS

Weather Radar

Polarimetric Doppler Radar
NSSL is involved in demonstrating the Polarimetric Doppler Radar (Dual Pol WSR-88D)'s ability to differentiate between different types of precipitation, and improve rainfall rate estimation.

National Weather Radar Testbed
The National Weather Radar Testbed at NSSL provides the meteorological research community with the first surveillance phased array radar facility available on a full-time basis. The radar is being adapted to weather detection by a unique federal, private, state and academic partnership. NWRT Usage Policy

SMART-R – Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching Radar
NSSL collaborated with other research institutions on building two SMART-Rs; the mobile C-band Doppler radars are used to study convective and mesoscale atmospheric processes that occur on short time and space scales and require flexible deployment.

Winter Hydrometeor Classification Ground Truth Program/Hail Size Discrimination Experiment
NSSL has partnered with members of the public to collect severe weather and winter weather observations within 90 miles of Norman, OK. The Winter Hydrometeor Classification Ground Truth Program and the Hail Size Discrimination Experiment support NSSL scientists involved in Polarimetric Doppler Radar development for determining what kind of precipitation is falling at any given location.

Forecast and Warning Improvements

NSSL Spring Experiment participants study the radar displays

SWAP – Severe Weather Analysis and Prediction
By developing a storm-scale NWP science that incorporates the latest data assimilation methods and modeling technologies, scientists hope to move from a "warn on detection" to "warn on forecast" paradigm to extend warning lead times.

HWT – Hazardous Weather Testbed
The Hazardous Weather Testbed provides the framework for development and implementation of new technologies that will have practical benefits, including those that focus on shorter-timescale forecasting challenges.

EWP – Experimental Warning Program
The Experimental Warning Program was established to improve the nation's hazardous weather warning services by bringing together forecasters, researchers, trainers, developers, and user groups to test and evaluate new techniques, applications, observing platforms, and technologies

TELEX - Thunderstorm Electrification and Lightning Experiment
The broad objective of TELEX is to learn how lightning and other electrical storm properties are dependent on storm structure, updrafts, and precipitation, information that will point to new ways for the National Weather Service to use lightning observations to improve forecasts and warnings of hazardous weather.

Severe Thunderstorm Climatology
The Severe Thunderstorm Climatology project estimates the likelihood of severe weather hazards in the United States, including threats from tornadoes, hail larger than three-quater inch, and damaging thunderstorm winds in excess of 58 mph, using data records collected since 1980.

PACS-SONET – Pan American Climate Studies Sounding Network
The PACS-SONET project was designed to collect low-cost upper atmospheric data from Central and South America. Pilot balloon observations, used at first to reanalyze the quality of the windfields over the area, are now available in a real-time data collection and distribution network for climate research activities and experiments.

WDSS-II - The Warning Decision Support System-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.

Hydrometeorology

Homes in this neighborhood are surrounded by flood water.

CIFLOW – Coastal and Inland FLooding Observation and Warning project
The CIFLOW consortium is working with NCSU to couple their existing estuary model, watershed water quality model, and an estuary water quality model to the NSSL multi-sensor precipitation estimation system and NWS distribution hydrologic model. The demonstration program will facilitate evaluating and testing new technologies and techniques to produce accurate and timely identification of coastal, estuary and inland floods, flash floods and their impacts on the coastal ecosystem.

National Basin Delineation Project
The objectives of the National Basin Delineation Project are to develop, enhance and maintain a national flash-flood-scale basin dataset in support of the NWS Flash Flood Monitoring and Prediction (FFMP) system, and to provide technical assistance for dataset customization efforts at local Weather Forecast Offices.

NMQ – National Mosaic and Next Generation QPE (Q2)
The National Mosaic and Next Generation QPE project provides a real-time, around-the-clock, applications development and testing environment configured to host new science applications as well as components of current methods, including automatic algorithm comparison and verification scoring.

HMT – Hydrometeorology Testbed Program
NSSL is participating in the Hydrometeorology Testbed Program that will accelerate the infusion of new technologies, models, and scientific results from the research community into daily forecasting operations of the NWS and its River Forecast Centers. HMT operates as a demonstration with forecasters and researchers joining forces in an operational setting.