The 3 GHz Chilbolton Advanced Meteorological Radar (CAMRa) is the largest steerable meteorological radar in the world. The 25 metre dish is located at the Chilbolton Observatory in England (UK). It has dual-polarisation capability and full Doppler capability. The scan-type is usually 'ppi' (plan-position indicator, i.e. a horizontal scan) or 'rhi' (range-height indicator, i.e. a vertical scan). Chilbolton Observatory is operated by the Radio Communications Research Unit of CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

The characteristics of the radar are:

The CWVC CAMRa dataset is now public. Please acknowledge the source of the data in any publication.

Data and quicklook images, for 30 March 1999, 9 June 2000, 20 October 2000, 21 November 2000, 28 February 2001, are available.

Data are stored in the BADC CWVC Mixed Phase Clouds data project archive.

Images are stored in the BADC CWVC Mixed Phase Clouds images project archive.

The data are in netCDF (binary) format and comply with the CF conventions ( NetCDF Climate and Forecast Metadata Convention (Eaton et al., 2001)).

• Documentation for the CAMRa dataset can be found in the BADC CWVC data area
• The Reading Radar Group CAMRa web page contains information, including details about calibration and known problems.
• CWVC Data Protocol
• CWVC Data Management Plan (Word document).
• Metadata standards for netCDF files, by Eaton et al., 2001.

If you have queries about these pages or about obtaining the CWVC-CamRA data from the BADC then you should contact BADC Support. Your query should be answered within one working day. When follow-up work is required, the BADC support will carry out the work as quickly and efficiently as possible, and in any case, the user will be kept informed of progress.

• The CWVC Programme Science Co-ordinator is Dr. Keith Bower (UMIST, Manchester).
• The CWVC Programme Administrator is Dr Sally Palmer (NERC, Swindon).
• Robin Hogan (Reading) supplied the dataset.
• Charles Kilburn (RAL) may be contacted about CAMRa.