TABLE OF CONTENTS In this chapter the modern Doppler weather radar has been introduced as a primary sensor to generate and feed data into the aviation weather surveillance systems being designed and installed for current and future aviation systems. The modern Doppler weather radar provides high-resolution three-dimensional coverage of a large volume of space, and provides an accurate picture of the distribution of such parameters as rainfall intensity, wind velocity and turbulence within the observation volume. These parameters are intrinsically of high significance from the point of view of aviation safety and efficiency, and the pattern of their distribution helps in the recognition of specific atmospheric features and the estimation of their hazard potential. Modern aviation weather surveillance systems perform many of these functions in an automated manner, for which the primary data from the Doppler weather radars serve as the basic input. The nature and features of such automated data processing for the generation of higher-level weather products leading to operational decisions, alerts and warnings are discussed in a subsequent chapter.
In addition to high resolution and wide coverage, a major advantage of the weather radar in the context of aviation weather surveillance lies in a matching of the resolution requirement of the surveillance system with the inherent resolution capability of radars. This is especially true of terminal area surveillance, which constitutes the most demanding segment of the aviation weather surveillance process. The accuracy of weather observation, measured in terms of resolution, is normally required to be the highest at...
