NEXRAD Level II Radar Data for Iowa Flood Studies Campaign

Radar datasets contain Level-II base data from four NEXRAD sites collected for the GPM Ground Validation Iowa Flood Studies field campaign. The data includes three core meteorological quantities: reflectivity, mean radial velocity, and spectrum width. It was collected by the Global Hydrology Resource Center DAAC over a period spanning March 29 to June 18, 2013.

Use Cases

• Validating satellite precipitation estimates from the GPM mission using ground-based radar reflectivity measurements.
• Analyzing storm structure and dynamics through time-series of mean radial velocity and spectrum width.
• Studying flood-generating precipitation events in central-northeastern Iowa during the 2013 IFloodS campaign.
• Comparing radar-derived hydrometeorological products across four specific NEXRAD site locations.

Strengths

• Data collection covers a focused 82-day period around an intensive field campaign, providing a temporally dense observation window.
• Includes three fundamental radar data quantities (reflectivity, velocity, spectrum width) essential for meteorological analysis.
• Sourced from the established NEXRAD (WSR-88D) network, a standard for operational weather radar in the United States.

Limitations

• Core data files are in a custom binary format requiring specialized software for visualization and decoding, limiting accessibility.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, with one listing 2013-06-18 and another listing 2026-03-13, suggesting potential metadata inconsistency.
• Exact dataset size, row count, and total file volume are not provided across any platform.

Provenance

Source

Global Hydrology Resource Center DAAC (GHRC_DAAC)

Collection Method

Collected from four Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) sites during the IFloodS field campaign.

Time Range

March 29, — June 18, 2013

Freshness

2026-03-13 02:20:25.620290

Geography

Central-northeastern Iowa, United States (from four specific NEXRAD sites)