Low altitude wind shear detection using airport surveillance radars

Abstract

This paper describes an enhanced weather processor for the Federal Aviation Administration's airport surveillance radar (ASR-9) that will include Doppler wind estimation for the detection of low altitude wind shear, scan-to-scan tracking to provide estimates of the speed and direction of storm movement and suppression of spurious weather reports currently generated by the ASR-9's six-level weather channel during episodes of anomalous radar energy propagation (AP). This ASR-9 wind shear processor (WSP) will be implemented as a retrofit to the ASR-9 through the addition of interfaces, receiving chain hardware and high-speed digital processing and display equipment. The WSP modification to the ASR-9 will provide the functional capabilities of the terminal Doppler weather radar at airports whose operation levels and/or thunderstorm exposures do not justify the costs of the dedicated radar. Field testing of a prototype version of the ASR-9 WSP has confirmed that the weather information products it generates are accurate and are operationally useful in an air traffic control (ATC) environment. >