The State of Weather Radar Operations, Networks and Products

Do you remember the famous cars of the early 1950s, the 2CV and the Volkswagen “Beetle”? They were simple tin boxes with four wheels, four seats, a motor, a steering wheel, and a speedometer. When opening the bonnet, you could recognise nearly every part, you understood all the functions and could handle most shortcomings yourself. How does a modern upper class car look nowadays in comparison? The front panel is like the cockpit of an aircraft and when opening the bonnet, you just may recognise where to fill the water for cleaning your windows. Similarly, weather radar systems developed from microwave devices transmitting radiation pulses and detecting the location and distance of a target by its reflection — RADAR means “RAdiation Detection And Ranging” — to “high tech” systems delivering a number of products of interest for the user. The “targets” we now have in mind are cloud and precipitation particles.