Real Time Dissemination of WSR-88 Radar Data over Internet2

Tom Sandman
Office of the CIO, NWS

Kevin Kelleher
National Severe Storms Laboratory, OAR

The National Weather Service (NWS) is in the process of making high-resolution radar data from the national network of NEXRAD radars available to the university research community and the government in near real-time over the Intenet2 Abilene backbone network. The data will also be made available to private sector users at points of presence provided by education and research consortiums. This data, know as "Level II' or "base" data, includes high-resolution reflectivity, velocity and spectrum width information. The high speed distribution system builds on lessons learned from the highly successful Collaborative Radar Acquisition Field Test (CRAFT) conducted jointly by the University of Oklahoma, the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, and the NWS Radar Operations Center (ROC).

The new system replaces the use of 8mm tape for the archive of Level II radar data and increases the coverage afforded by CRAFT from 61 NWS radars to 121 NWS and 11 Department of Defense radars. The system also replaces a number of miscellaneous data transmission methods with a single communications infrastructure based on the Weather Service's enterprise network (NWSNet) and the Internet2 Abilene backbone.

Using this near real time collection and dissemination system, Level II data is collected at the WSR-88D Radar Product Generator using UNIDATA's Local Data Manager (LDM) protocol installed on the Base Data Dissemination System (BDDS) LAN and is then conveyed through the associated weather forecast office over NWSNet frame relay PVCs to a regional headquarters LDM server. Each regional headquarters is connected to a conveniently located Abilene GigaPoP. From the GigaPoP the data is transmitted over the Abilene OC-192 backbone network through the LDM cloud to researchers at universities; to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) at Asheville, NC; and to the National Center for Atmospheric Prediction in Camp Springs, MD. The data will be distributed to the private sector through arrangements with one or more of the GigaPoPs.

I will present an overview of the project and explain how the Internet2 Abilene network is playing a vital role in the near real time dissemination of NEXRAD Level II data. The discussion will include a perspective on how the NWS plans to use the Internet2 in the future to collaborate with its research partners.