XSAPR-CMAC

Raw data from ARM precipitation radars must be corrected for atmospheric phenomena and instrument characteristics (e.g., attenuation, clutter) to retrieve precipitation properties. The Corrected Moments in Antenna Coordinates value-added product (CMAC VAP) is a set of algorithms and code that makes such corrections, and it also retrieves precipitation quantities from the radar measurements. For this VAP, CMAC is applied to the X-Band Scanning ARM Precipitation Radar (XSAPR) data at the Southern Great Plains and North Slope of Alaska atmospheric observatories to provide corrected data for the user.

CMAC provides data in a community-standard-format netCDF file using CF-Radial conventions. The data are therefore compatible with new and existing National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) tools; the Python ARM Radar Toolkit (Py-ART), an open-source architecture for interacting with radar data in the Python programming language; and other community code. The VAP team is always interested in improving processing and contributions to Py-ART to directly feed CMAC.