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Aviation

NCEI maintains the official repository for Next Generation Radar (NEXRAD) data. Airlines and public agencies use this data to investigate potential causes of airplane accidents and incidents. Investigators can search the archive to identify weather related factors such as storm encounters, as well as non-weather factors like birds flying into an engine, or an airplane malfunction. This process helps officials diagnose what went wrong in a given accident, and offer recommendations to airlines on how to avoid such problems in the future.

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Paul Suffern, Senior Meteorologist Investigator, National Transportation Safety Board

Paul Suffern, Senior Meteorologist Investigator, National Transportation Safety Board

“I have five aviation accidents that landed on my desk this week and I plan to use the NEXRAD archive from [NCEI’s] Weather and Climate Toolkit to analyze all of them."