Creating Rotation Tracks using WDSS-II

How do you go about creating rotation tracks starting from Level-II radar data from NCDC?

w2image-KBMX_RotationTrack120min-20110428-030101-1

The entire process is described in M. Miller, V. Lakshmanan, and T. Smith, “An automated method for depicting mesocyclone paths and intensities,” Wea. Forecasting, vol. 28, pp. 570-585, 2013

If you use Rotation Tracks in your research, please cite the above paper and also cite the papers for each of the following steps.

  1. Untar the Level-II data and place it somewhere. Let’s call this directory RAWDIR
  2. Get terrain netcdf data for your radar. You can get terrain files for US radars from ftp://ftp.nssl.noaa.gov/users/lakshman/conus_radar_blockage.tgz.   Untar this, and let’s call this directory TERRAIN
  3. Decide where you want your output products to go. Let’s call this DATADIR.
  4. Define a variable RADAR to hold your radar identifier (e.g. KBMX)
  5. Run ldm2netcdf to convert the Level-II data into NetCDF
  6. QC the radar reflectivity data.  Note that I am assuming that you have don’t have dualpol (if you do have dualpol, you should w2qcnndp) and that you do have super-resolution (if you have 1km resolution, change -R accordingly)
  7. Dealias the velocity data
  8. Compute Azimuthal Shear
  9. Run w2merger to put the data on a LatLonGrid
  10. Run w2accumulator with QC to create the rotation tracks

Here’s a script that will carry out the entire process. Edit as needed.

#!/bin/sh

RAWDIR=`pwd`/raw
RADAR=KBMX

# Overall reference about the entire process
# M. Miller, V. Lakshmanan, and T. Smith, ``An automated method for depicting mesocyclone paths and intensities,'' Wea. Forecasting, vol. 28, pp. 570-585, 2013. 

TERRAIN=~/WDSS2/gtopo30/radars/$RADAR.nc
DATADIR=`pwd`/$RADAR

# (5) convert Level-II to netcdf
# V. Lakshmanan, T. Smith, G. J. Stumpf, and K. Hondl, ``The warning decision support system - integrated information,'' Wea. Forecasting, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 596-612, 2007.
ldm2netcdf -i $RAWDIR -o $DATADIR -s $RADAR -p $RADAR -a -1 --verbose
replaceIndex -i $DATADIR/code_index.fam -o $DATADIR/code_index.xml

# (6) note: if you have dualpol data, use w2qcnndp instead of w2qccn. The rest of the command-line is the same
# V. Lakshmanan, A. Fritz, T. Smith, K. Hondl, and G. J. Stumpf, ``An automated technique to quality control radar reflectivity data,'' J. Applied Meteorology, vol. 46, pp. 288-305, Mar 2007
# V. Lakshmanan, C. Karstens, J. Krause, and L. Tang, ``Quality control of weather radar data using polarimetric variables,'' J. Atm. Ocea. Tech., vol. 0, p. 0, 2013. 
w2qcnn -i $DATADIR/code_index.xml -o $DATADIR -R 0.25x0.5x460 -s $RADAR -E $TERRAIN -u --verbose
replaceIndex -i $DATADIR/code_index.fam -o $DATADIR/code_index.xml

# (7) note: if you have sounding information, provide it. the results will be better
# Jing and Wiener 1993
dealias2d -i $DATADIR/code_index.xml -o $DATADIR --verbose
replaceIndex -i $DATADIR/code_index.fam -o $DATADIR/code_index.xml

# (8) run LLSD
# Smith and Elmore 2004 
w2circ -i $DATADIR/code_index.xml -o $DATADIR -a -w -z ReflectivityQC -Z 20 -D -t -c -L "0:2:1.0:7.5:AGL  3:6:0:90:AGL" -V "0.5 250 920" -G $RADAR -g $TERRAIN --verbose
replaceIndex -i $DATADIR/code_index.fam -o $DATADIR/code_index.xml

# (9) run w2merger to put the data on a cartesian grid
# V. Lakshmanan, T. Smith, K. Hondl, G. J. Stumpf, and A. Witt, ``A real-time, three dimensional, rapidly updating, heterogeneous radar merger technique for reflectivity, velocity and derived products,'' Wea. Forecasting, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 802-823, 2006. 
# V. Lakshmanan and T. W. Humphrey, ``A MapReduce technique to mosaic continental-scale weather radar data in real-time,'' IEEE J. of Select Topics in Appl. Earth Obs. and Remote Sensing, vol. 0, no. 0, 2013.
TOP=`grep -A 2 $RADAR ~/WDSS2/src/w2/w2config/misc/radarinfo.xml | head -2 | tail -1 | sed 's/[=\"]/ /g' | awk '{print $3+4,$5-4}'`
BOT=`grep -A 2 $RADAR ~/WDSS2/src/w2/w2config/misc/radarinfo.xml | head -2 | tail -1 | sed 's/[=\"]/ /g' | awk '{print $3-4,$5+4}'`
echo "$TOP to $BOT"
w2merger -i $DATADIR/code_index.xml -o $DATADIR -I AzShear_0-2kmAGL -p 0.001 -e 60 -C 1 -R 230 -t "$TOP 1" -b "$BOT 0" -s "0.005 0.005 1" --verbose
replaceIndex -i $DATADIR/code_index.fam -o $DATADIR/code_index.xml

# (10) run w2accumulator with QC
# V. Lakshmanan, M. Miller, and T. Smith, ``Quality control of accumulated fields by applying spatial and temporal constraints,'' J. Atmos. Ocean. Tech., vol. 30, pp. 745-757, 2013. 
w2accumulator -i $DATADIR/code_index.xml -o $DATADIR -R -s -t "60 120 360" -C 1 -O RotationTrack -t 120 -Q blob:0.002:0.005:25:azshear,mht:1:2:1800:5:1 -g MergedAzShear_0-2kmAGL --verbose
replaceIndex -i $DATADIR/code_index.fam -o $DATADIR/code_index.xml
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