P4.5 Three-Dimensional Mosaic of the Eddy Dissipation Rate Fields from WSR-88Ds

A national 3-D mosaic of in-cloud turbulence, represented as Eddy Dissipation Rate (EDR), is being developed and prototyped through collaboration between the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and NOAA’s National Severe Storms Lab (NSSL) under the auspices of the FAA Aviation Weather Research Program’s Turbulence and Advanced Weather Radar Techniques (AWRT) Research Teams (RTs). The EDR field is an indicator of in-cloud turbulence intensity derived from WSR88Ds’ spectrum width data by the NEXRAD Turbulence Detection Algorithm (NTDA, Williams et al. 2006), which was developed at NCAR by the Turbulence RT. The NTDA software has been delivered to the National Weather Service Radar Operations Center and will be implemented operationally on all WSR-88Ds beginning in the spring of 2008, providing EDR and the associated confidence field, called EDC, as polar-grid Level III data for each radar elevation tilt. A national 3-D mosaic of the EDR field will provide a high-resolution, rapid update, in-cloud turbulence product for use in aviation safety decision support processes. In particular, the Turbulence RT plans to incorporate it into a new rapidupdate version of the Graphical Turbulence Guidance product, which will directly address convective turbulence for the first time.