MST radar data from the new (version-3) signal processing scheme
now available through the BADC
A new (version-3 or v3), real-time MST Radar signal processing scheme
began operations in January 2006. This scheme represents the
culmination of a long research-and-development exercise which has been
undertaken in collaboration with the Met Office. The Met Office have
evaluated the quality of the thirty-minute-average wind components by
making comparisons against their numerical weather prediction
model. This has demonstrated a significant improvement in data quality
over the v0 signal processing scheme (for which development ceased in
2001). Consequently the Met Office switched over from v0 to v3 data
for operational assimilation in September 2006.
v3 data are now being made available through the British
Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) in netCDF (binary) format files. netCDF
is being used by an increasing number of datasets stored by the BADC
and the routines required to read MST radar data are the same as those
used for reading any other netCDF file.
At present v3 data are only available for early November 2006
onwards. Eventually all archived observations will be reprocessed and
the data products made available in the new format. However, this will
take some time. If you are interested in data for particular dates
which are not yet available, please contact the NERC MST
Radar Facility Project Scientist. Reprocessing can be undertaken
upon request.
IMPORTANT: Production of v0 and v2 data files to cease in early
2007
The current radar control and data acquisition system
has been in operation since 1999. It cannot be maintained indefinitely
and so work has been undertaken over the past 18 months to develop a
new system. Low-level data (i.e. spectral) from this new system will
be written natively into netCDF files. Although it will be simple to
adapt v3 processing to operate on the new files, v0 processing is
inextricably linked to the old, non-standard format spectral
files. Consequently the production of v0 data will cease when the new
acquisition system is installed for operational purposes. This is
anticipated to take place in January 2007. Please contact the NERC MST
Radar Facility Project Scientist if this is likely to cause any
problems.
THE NERC MST RADAR FACILITY AT ABERYSTWYTH