Education & Training

RGIS - Educational Modules, Great Plains

An Introduction to Basic Concepts of Weather RADAR for Use Within a GIS

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About This Module

This module identifies the basic process used in transforming a transmitted and received microwave energy pulse into precipitation estimation. The module also explains the methods and issues associated with collection of radar data and the assumptions made in the process of precipitation estimations using this type of data. Included is a description of the effects that the physical world has on the precipitation itself as it exits the cloud base and travels through the atmosphere to the earth’s surface. The module also explains the transformation of the radar’s “raster-type” pixel shape into a raster grid with cells comprised of sides of equal dimensions and how that affects the original data values. Lastly, the difference in the use of precipitation estimate outputs using a raster grid verses a point location will be discussed with examples given. The sections within the overall module are the following:

  • An introductory section, which gives basic principals of how radar samples the atmosphere and the characteristics of the raw data samples along with how the data is converted into a rectangular grid.
  • Radar and earth/atmosphere interactions.
  • A very basic description of the formula used to calculate the precipitation estimates.
  • Comparisons of precipitation estimates from a radar verses ground samples used for analysis.
  • An example data set to use within a GIS.

Module Audience

This module is designed to educate and inform land use planners, water resource managers, and the general public on the use of radar derived precipitation estimates in a GIS.

Module Materials & Tools

The module can be used either as a teaching aide for others or as a self-taught lesson. 

  • The PowerPoint presentation is self-contained with explanatory text for each slide; an Instructor Guide is not needed.
  • Raw data for those who do not have access to the Internet, but still want to replicate the process.  Included in the data files are “Read Me” text files providing information about the data.

Module Software & Hardware Needs

For basic use of this module, such as showing only the process of acquiring internet data, concepts, and terminology, only a computer running PowerPoint and a projector is required.  For those who want to apply it with GIS operations, geographical information system software will be needed in order to import, analyze, and display the data.  For this module, the ESRI suite of software was used, but other GIS suites should be available which could work with this basic type of text data.

  • Microsoft PowerPoint
  • GIS software (optional – see below)
  • Projector

For More Information Contact:

Leon Osborne, University of North Dakota
Regional Weather Information Center, UND Aerospace
3980 Campus Road Stop 9007
Grand Forks, North Dakota 58202
Email: leono@rwic.und.edu