CASA in AWIPS

The CASA AWIPS initiative is joint project between the NWS Office of Science and Technology and CASA. AWIPS stands for Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System and is the NWS operational data platform which allows forecasters to prepare forecasts and issue warnings. The initiative is part of a risk reduction strategy to allow high spatial and temporal resolution weather products (like MPAR, Satellite, and CASA) into the AWIPS platform. Therefore, CASA can be a prototype for integrating other bandwidth intensive data in AWIPS. In order to get CASA data into AWIPS, data file and system modification were necessary to address the bandwidth problem. In May of 2010, CASA's single radar reflectivity and velocity products and CASA's merged reflectivity product were successfully integrated into AWIPS. CASA data could be viewed in both the Norman forecast office console and the Hazardous Weather Test Bed console in real time for evaluation. Through evaluative process we have highlighted a communications bottleneck, which will be addressed in AWIPS2, the next generation of the system. Three forecasters participating in the Hazardous Weather Testbed in 2010 completed questionnaires and offered verbal feedback after viewing CASA on AWIPS during live events. Following are some of the forecaster quotes:

•  "The resolution and detail of the lower portion of the storm is amazing. I was able to easily compare 88D data and overlay non-radar datasets with CASA data."
• "I had my 4 panel loops running at all times...The loops that I created just showed the entire 2.0 scan (no sectors) of all 4 radars in real time. I simply just "zoomed in" using AWIPS of the area of interest."
• "CASA also allows you to see much smaller circulations developing over short periods of time which allows you to issue more precise warnings, especially for bow-echo type tornado events."
• "Having high temporal and spatial resolution radar data would greatly enhance our confidence to make warning and forecast decisions and could potentially improve numerical forecasts as well."
• "There were some issues with latency and data dropouts in AWIPS."

Anticyclonic tornado in the CASA testbed on May 10, 2010 displayed on AWIPS in the Hazardous Weather Testbed. CASA data is on the right and top left.