Replacement For Aging Doppler Radar Being Tested

longacre writes "Due to its limited range and slow scan times, the backbone of weather prediction in the US since the early 1990s, the NEXRAD radar system, is deeply flawed in the eyes of meteorologists. A new system being tested by researchers at the NOAA and four universities called the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) network aims to fill the holes left by NEXRAD, using radar nodes piggybacked onto existing infrastructure, such as rooftops and cell towers. From the article: 'Based on faster and more comprehensive data collection, [Distributed Collaborative Adaptive Sensing] processing can refocus the CASA radars on a particularly interesting part of a storm (like an area that looks like it might develop a tornado) without losing track of an entire storm cell. "The system is continuously diagnosing the atmosphere and reallocating resources using wireless Internet as a backbone," says [the CASA team director].' Testing has begun in Oklahoma, Houston, and Puerto Rico, and initial installations could begin in 5 years."

Re:Outdated information

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprise, surprise.

I had some marginal involvment in a Met Radar tender in a country I used to live in (outside USA). The particular application was Met support for air traffic control. The same system as used in the USA was tendered there. We laughed and threw it out. We stopped laughing next day when they started bribing directly and indirectly (through perks and junkets) every single person in the decision process ladder top to bottom.

At the end they lost the tender to a German company which has supplied Radars in nearly all EU countries that do not have their native production. This was all despite wasting a fair amount of money on bribes. They were so technically inferior that it was not even funny. Their only advantage was that even a civil defence force/national guard idiot could operate the kit (it was userfriendly for a radar, that is something which they should get credit for).

All I can say is good bye and good riddance. About bloody time. At present USA is the only country in the world where planes have better Met radar capability and a better idea of what goes on in the atmosphere than ground staff even at some of the major airports.

Re:Slow

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

In financial forecasting systems, the critical element is variance reporting. 'How wrong was yesterday's prediction?' leads to a sense of 'How much faith can you put in today's prediction?' Why, pray tell, is it that we NEVER see variance reports on the weather report?

Re:Stealth hunter?

[Rich0]

Such a system may not have much utility in a serious war. There are a few good reasons:

1. At best they give you an idea of where a target is - they're not suitable for guiding missles towards a target and shotting it down. That requires continuous illumination, which is hard when the illuminator doesn't easily get any feedback as to whether it is on target or not, and a missile can't see the reflections reliably.

2. It still depends on RF transmission to illuminate a target, but instead it uses "civilian" transmitters instead of military ones. I use the term civilian very loosly since if your cell phone network is used to illuminate military aircraft it is no longer a civilian technology. In a war with serious stakes an enemy would just fire anti-radiation missiles or artillery at anything that emits RF.

3. Civilian transmitters don't tend to have much in the way of infrastructure redundancy like military ones do. Blow up all the local power stations and batteries should be dead within a day or two, and blow up the fuel depots and even diesel generators aren't going to be much help - cell towers don't typically have huge fuel reserves like a military base would.

The main advantage of this sort of technology would be the ability to use super-cheap transmitters in combination with super-expensive receivers. Since the two are not in proximity it would be much easier to conceal the expensive detection equipment, and transmitters could be made more disposable.

In a less serious war you could rely on the reluctance of an enemy to destroy infrastructure that is primarily civilian in nature. However, in a less-serious war the enemy will probably not be so dependant on defeating your radar system - the only reason wars aren't fought seriously is because the conclusion is evident from the start.

Re:Slow

[tuxicle]

Also, by spreading smaller radars around, you observe stuff closer to the ground. This is typically missed by bigger radars such as NEXRAD, since the beams overshoot low-level features as you go further out in range.

Re:Better prediction means...

[catmistake]

Right now, NEXRAD affords a 15-20 minute heads up on tornados, and its not clear if that can be increased. Chaos Theory tells us that if we had a grid of sensors in the atmosphere 1 foot apart all around the globe and took a reading, the accuracy of predictions based on that reading would break down in about an hour. Certainly, tornado watches could be issued earlier, but tornado formation happens so quickly there is a limit to how early they could be predicted with any certainty, regardless of how accurate a radar reading.