Towards Global Standards for Representing Weather Radar Data and Products Addressed by WMO ET-OWR

The need for standardized representation of weather radar data and associated products is being addressed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through the Expert Team on Operational Weather Radar (ET-OWR) and Expert Team on Data Standards (ET-Data). This work started with the development of a standard for moment data in original polar/spherical coordinates in NetCDF, FM301, which is based on the widely used CfRadial format (CfRadial2). The 76th session of the WMO Executive Council (EC-76) subsequently approved publication of the profile in the WMO Manual on Codes, and activities to promote and support member adoption are now underway. These include development of software libraries and conformance checkers, and investigating the exchange of FM301 using the WMO Information System (WIS) version 2.0.
ET-OWR is now also taking steps towards the standardization of Cartesian representations for common radar products such as reflectivity composites and quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) grids. The need for such a format to facilitate product exchange in local regions has been raised within WMO Regional Association II (Asia) during an RA II regional weather radar workshop series. Where RA members are unable to exchange raw polar data due to technical or political constraints, exchange of derived Cartesian products can still provide significant value. ET-OWR members have also indicated a strong desire to address standardization of time-series (I/Q) datasets for use within research and other non-operational contexts.

The status of WMO ET-OWR activities to support adoption of FM301 will be presented, as well as new efforts on the standardization of time-series and Cartesian datasets.