Data / Science Data Products / VAPs

CMAC

Corrected Radar Moments in Antenna Coordinates

Baseline VAP, Evaluation VAP

CMAC: Corrected Precipitation Radar Moments in Antenna Coordinates

Raw moments from the scanning ARM precipitation radars (SAPRs) are subject to a number of instrumental and atmospheric phenomena that must be retrieved and corrected for. The Corrected Moments in Antenna Coordinates (CMAC) value-added product contains both raw data and fields that have been processed to:

correct for velocity aliasing
unfold and generate a cross-polarimetric phase difference that is monotonically increasing, removing impulses caused by non-uniform beam filling and phase shift on backscatter
recalculate specific differential phase using a 20-point Sobel filter on the aforementioned phase
correct for liquid path attenuation using the polarimetric signals
estimate rainfall rates at the gate using the specific attenuation.

In addition, CMAC writes the data out into a community-standard-format netCDF file using the CF/Radial conventions. The data are therefore compatible with new and existing National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) tools, such as RadxConvert for converting to a variety of popular file formats.