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Source: NOAA
It may be self evident that the use of radar for weather forecasting has not yet been mentioned. As radar
was put to use for the war effort in the late 1930s,
no one imagined that the technology was sensitive
enough to detect weather phenomena. When it became evident that it could detect weather, the technology was reserved strictly for the military weather
services since a high security classification was placed
on all things radar for obvious reasons. These wartime
successes set the stage for postwar use of radar in
meteorology and the accompanying growth of this new
technology.
After the War, the cost and complexity of radar systems ensured that only government
agencies, mainly the military and civil weather services, had access to them. The CPS-9
Storm Detection Radar was the first radar designed, developed, and deployed in the mid
1940s specifically for meteorologists. Expansion of the Weather Bureaus radar system grew
in the 1950s as well. Radar use by the airline industry, weather broadcast companies, and
commercial weather facilities followed shortly thereafter.
By the 1960s, the radar systems electronics were lighter in weight, due mostly to
advances that came about through the advent of solid state components in the US space
program. These lighter systems ushered in radars use on aircraft for storm avoidance and
on-the-ground use as well. The most popular radar system used by the Weather Bureau
in the 1960s was the WSR-57, which advanced radars ability to detect storms behind
rainfall and to observe hurricanes at great distances. The last WSR-57 was retired in 1996.
By the 1970s, television stations began installing radars for use in their weather
broadcasts as ground-based weather radar continued to advance and became more
affordable. The most common radar at this time was the WSR-74C a new generation
weather radar for local warnings that operated in the C band of the electromagnetic
spectrum where wavelengths occur in microwave frequencies. Demand for radar
information and more sophisticated radar reports grew dramatically at this time,
and continue to grow today.
The 1980s and 1990s saw the development of two Doppler radars: the NEXt-Generation
Weather RADar (NEXRAD) now called WSR-88D (for Weather Survelliance Radar 1988
Doppler), and Terminal Doppler Weather Radar, which are located near airports tohelp detect
a kind of wind shear called microbursts that are especially dangerous as planes land or take
off. While all weather radars send out radio waves from an antenna that scatter or reflect when
they encounter objects in the air such as rain, snow, hail, dust and more, the advantage of
Doppler radars is that they can illustrate wind direction and speed around these objects by
measuring the frequency change in returning radio waves. Waves reflected by something moving away from the antenna have a lower frequency, while waves from an object moving toward
the antenna change to a higher frequency.
Computers that are part of the Doppler system next produce images illustrating
these wind motions. Today we even have Doppler on Wheels or DOWs, which allow
transport of these invaluable radars to areas where severe storms are threatening or where
weather research is needed. The NEXRAD system includes 154 Doppler radars across the
country.
Also, radars can be found on spacecraft. NASAs and Japans Tropical Rainfall Measurement
Mission (TRMM) satellite carries a Precipition Radar that helps scientists better understand how
rainfall happens and why so they can improve future forecasts.
Future Radar Advances
Phased array radar is a technology that has been used soley by the military since the mid-1970s
to protect naval battle ships from missile threats. In 2003, it was released to weather researchers at the National Severe Storms Lab in Oklahoma. This technology, formerly called Spy-1, may
help forecasters of the future provide earlier warnings for tornadoes and other types of severe
and hazardous weather. For example, what today would give a 10-minute warning is expected to
improve to a 20-minute warning.
While todays WSR-88D radars can transmit one beam of energy at a time and listen for the
returned energy, phased arrays work by sending out multiple beams at one time so the antennas
never need to tilt. Scanning takes only 30 seconds, whereas WSR-88D takes about 7 minutes to
fully scan the atmosphere. The phased array radar technology is likely to become the next significant technology advancement to improve our nations weather services.
PARs rapid
scanning ability
gives it the ability
to look at more
than one mission:
weather, wind
profiling, and
aircraft tracking,
and to focus its
scans at the
most important
features.
Source: NOAA
Wind Profiler
I
Radar detected incoming enemy aircraft
on the morning of December 7, 1941
at Opano Point, Hawaii before the Pearl
Harbor attack that led the US into WWII.
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1970s
The most common
radar in the 1970s was
the WSR-74C a new
generation weather radar
for local warnings that
operated in the C band
of the electromagnetic
spectrum where
wavelengths occur in
microwave frequencies.
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1900s
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1960s
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