Collaborative Research: Enhancing Radar Meteorology Instruction with an Open, Flexible, Online Course

University Corporation For Atmospheric Res, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

A free, online, customizable, college-level course in Radar Meteorology will be created with this award. This project aims to educate the general public, professional partners, and students about the uses, applications, and limitations of weather radars. Data from public and private weather radars are being used in everyday decision making at local, regional, and national levels, including in emergency response situations such as tornadoes and flash floods. However, not all weather radars have the same attributes, capabilities, or data quality. If weather radar data is used inappropriately, it can potentially jeopardize public safety. To optimize the use of radar in decision making, it is critical that all end users of weather radar data have access to high-quality instructional material explaining the physical meaning, accurate interpretation, and limitations of radar products. Absent access to such open educational materials, the quality of radar meteorology education will remain uneven, disadvantaging those learners who may not have access to expensive software and textbooks. The Radar Meteorology course will be published as a series of lessons on the COMET Meteorology Education (MetEd) web site, which already hosts hundreds of free atmospheric science and geoscience lessons. The radar meteorology lessons will be designed to meet the needs of diverse users with different needs and ability levels, but also comprehensive and detailed enough to incorporate into university-level instruction. Additionally, the lessons will incorporate multimedia graphics and virtual reality (VR) renderings, allowing users to connect radar-sensed variables to atmospheric processes and properties. All media assets will be openly downloadable and reusable. This online, multimedia approach will make radar meteorology education broadly accessible to diverse users, increase public knowledge about the capabilities and limitations of weather radar data, and inform decision makers in the use of radar. This project aligns with NSF’s missions to support education and broaden participation in science to diverse learners. Comprising a series of online lessons at the undergraduate level, this multimedia, interactive course will be created through a collaboration between Purdue University and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research's COMET program. The course will exist on COMET’s Meteorology Education (MetEd) website and will prepare meteorology students, professional partners, and the general public to understand and apply polarimetric weather radar products, as well as novel radar system architectures (such as phased array radar) that they are likely to encounter in the future. The lessons will cover topics including polarimetric electromagnetic scattering, signal processing, physical interpretation of weather radar variables, and real-world applications of weather radar and its data, among other topics. A case study gallery will include examples from a variety of weather radars observing many atmospheric phenomena. This gallery will include examples from the National Weather Service operational radars (WSR-88D), Purdue University’s X-band weather radar (XTRRA), and experimental/field data from the National Center for Atmospheric Science’s Earth Observing Laboratory’s archive, extending the longevity of these assets. Additionally, open-source software-based examples will instruct users on the interrogation and analysis of weather radar data. The online course will expand beyond the traditional textbook-based style of teaching radar meteorology to include interactive, multimedia, and programming demonstrations. Lessons will be developed following COMET's formal design and development process. COMET will define relevant learning outcomes and objectives based on the science content and survey results and choose an effective instructional approach and design paradigm. The effectiveness of these lessons through the use of pre- and post-course assessments, completion rates, and access metrics (automatically collected by COMET). An advisory board and student user testing participants will review lessons. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.