Canadian Weather Radar Visibility

Property Value
identifier urn:wmo:md:ca-eccc-msc:b2634521-33fe-4223-ba63-b4d14779bfe9
type dataset
created 2025-09-15T00:00:00Z
updated
title Canadian Weather Radar Visibility
description Wind turbines can contaminate weather radar data which can compromise Environment and Climate Change Canada’s (ECCC) ability to provide quality weather forecasts and warnings to Canadians. In support of ECCC’s wind farm and weather radar siting guidelines, weather radar visibility layers were created for 150, 200 and 250 meters above ground level (mAGL) surface heights, which are representative of typical past and present wind turbine heights (base-to-tip or total) as well as potential future turbine heights given the trend. These visibility layers were generated from a viewshed analysis using ECCC’s 32 operational S-Band weather radars as observers and the three abovementioned heights as surface offsets. Within these visibility layers, turbines that are 150, 200 and 250 mAGL tall are likely to be visible to ECCC’s operational weather radars and therefore have the potential to contaminate weather radar data. A polygon layer containing 10 and 60 kilometer radius buffers around each radar denoting the turbine-radar impact zones are also included in this dataset.
wmo:dataPolicy core
keywords
  • Weather radar
  • Wind farm
  • Wind turbine
  • Interference
themes concepts: id: Radar
id: Weather
id: Wind Energy
id: Cartography

scheme: https://canada.multites.net/cst/EAEAD1E6-7DD2-4997-BE7F-40BFB1CBE8A2/CST20230912.rdf
concepts: id: weather

scheme: https://codes.wmo.int/wis/topic-hierarchy/earth-system-discipline
contacts addresses: deliveryPoint: 77 Westmorland Street, suite 260
city: Fredericton
administrativeArea: New Brunswick
postalCode: E3B 6Z4
country: Canada

roles: host
organization: Government of Canada; Environment and Climate Change Canada; Meteorological Service of Canada
name: National Inquiry Response Team / Équipe nationale de réponse des demandes du public
position: National Inquiry Response Team
hoursOfService: 0700h - 1500h EST
contactInstructions: email
phones: value: +18199972800

emails: value: ECWeather-Meteo@ec.gc.ca

links: rel: canonical
type: text/html
href: https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change.html

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