Radar Technologies for Meteorological and Atmospheric Observations

Dear Colleagues,

Currently, countries around the world are strengthening their meteorological support capabilities through concrete policies and programs to address the increasing frequency of extreme weather events. The European Union, via its “European Climate Adaptation Strategy” and the "Early Warnings for All" Initiative, aims to extend the lead time for extreme weather warnings by 30% by 2027. Guided by its National Climate Resilience Strategy, the United States is upgrading its Next-Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) network under the leadership of NOAA. This effort focuses on improving the monitoring accuracy of severe convective weather and advancing the Weather-Ready Nation Initiative to increase community warning coverage to 90%. Countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan have also launched national adaptation plans and specialized technical programs. Examples include the UK’s development of a street-level "hyper-local warning system", Germany’s legislative establishment of an urban climate monitoring network, and Japan’s efforts to reduce the false alarm rate for heavy rainfall warnings by 20%. In China, the “Implementation Plan for Enhancing Short-Term Nowcasting Capabilities for Extreme Disastrous Weather (2025–2026)” has been issued. It explicitly sets targets to increase weather radar coverage in key regions from 82% to 86% and to extend the average lead time for severe convective weather warnings from 43 to 46 minutes. In the field of smart cities, China is promoting the "Data Factor × Meteorological Services" initiative, aiming to increase the proportion of digital meteorological service products in selected regions from 10% to 75% by 2027. To support the burgeoning low-altitude economy, the China Meteorological Administration has introduced a series of guidelines aimed at developing "minute-level, hundred-meter-level" refined monitoring and forecasting capabilities in some provinces. These policies and programs directly drive strong demand for high-precision, rapid-scanning radar technologies, such as phased array weather radar for monitoring severe convection and lidar for low-altitude wind field detection. They also reflect a global trend toward comprehensively improving observation and warning accuracy, coverage equity, and urban resilience through quantified targets, including radar technology upgrades, coordinated radar network observations, AI integration, and open data sharing.

Radar is a powerful tool for meteorological detection and atmospheric observation. In recent decades, significant progress has been made in both meteorological radar equipment and the methods and techniques for atmospheric detection. However, achieving the planned enhancements in meteorological observation and warning capabilities, as outlined by various nations, still faces several critical challenges. These include the accurate identification of severe convective and disastrous weather, effective radar data quality control, the generation and retrieval of high-accuracy and high-resolution radar meteorological products, and high-accuracy short-term nowcasting based on radar data. Addressing these key issues requires further in-depth research and innovative achievements related to radar technology.

The objective of this Special Issue is to solicit the latest technological breakthroughs in radar for meteorological and atmospheric observation, as well as innovative methodologies for cross-scenario radar applications. Particular emphasis will be placed on novel signal processing methods and algorithms aimed at enhancing the quality of meteorological radar data, new techniques for radar networking and coordinated observation to generate refined atmospheric physical fields (including reflectivity fields, three-dimensional wind fields, temperature fields, pressure fields, etc.), and new AI-based approaches for the identification, tracking, and warning/forecasting of severe convective and hazardous weather using multi‑radar data fusion. All these topics fall within the domain of meteorological radar remote sensing, which aligns closely with the scope of Remote Sensing.

Suggested themes include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Novel algorithms for weather radar data quality control;
2. The latest high-performance methods for detection, intelligent identification, and tracking of severe convection and hazardous weather;
3. Retrieval of atmospheric physical fields (e.g., wind and pressure fields) utilizing multi-radar networks and integrated systems that combine radar with other observational devices;
4. Novel approaches for refined short-term nowcasting that leverage radar data inputs;
5. Key technological advances in phased array radar for meteorological observations;
6. Layout, networking, and methods for generating refined meteorological products for radar, lidar, and other equipment in the context of low-altitude and urban meteorology.

Prof. Dr. Haijiang Wang
Dr. Sheng Chen
Dr. Zhiqun Hu
Guest Editors

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• radar technologies
• meteorological and atmospheric observations
• data quality control
• atmospheric physical field retrieval
• radar networking
• artificial intelligence application