Overview
This collection contains a long-term archive of the Bureau of Meteorology operational weather network data. These observations are collected from sites across Australia for a period of more than twenty years and provide an invaluable understanding of precipitation and severe weather, including tropical cyclones and thunderstorms. Level 1 data is unprocessed, ungridded (spherical coordinates) and provided using the Eumetnet ODIMH5 model of the HDF5 format. Level 1b consists of corrected and calibrated 3D gridded data and volumetric in netCDF4 format. Level 2 data provides 2D grids of retrievals in netCDF4.
Summary
Operational: Only weather radar data from national network is hosted
Updated: Level 1 is updated regularly. Level 1b and 2 are updated infrequently.
Licensed: Level 1 is licenced under CC BY 4.0. Level 1b and 2 are licenced under CC BY-NC 4.0. See licence document in the root directory of each dataset.
Citing
- Level 1: Soderholm J., A. Protat, C. Jakob, 2019: Australian Operational Weather Radar Level 1 Dataset. electronic dataset, National Computing Infrastructure, doi: 10.25914/508X-9A12
- Level 1b: Soderholm J., V. Louf, J. Brook, A. Protat, 2022: Australian Operational Weather Radar Level 1b Dataset. electronic dataset, National Computing Infrastructure, doi: 10.25914/40KE-NM05
- Level 2: Soderholm J., V. Louf, J. Brook, A. Protat, R. Warren, 2022: Australian Operational Weather Radar Level 2 Dataset. electronic dataset, National Computing Infrastructure, doi: 10.25914/JJWZ-0F13
Example Data Availability Statement: SHI data is available from the AURA level 2 dataset on NCI under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence from https://dx.doi.org/10.25914/JJWZ-0F13
This project was undertaken with the assistance of resources and services from Monash University, National Environmental Science Program, the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) and the Bureau of Meteorology.
© Bureau of Meteorology 2025
Resources
Level 1 NCI Data Catalogue
Level 1b NCI Data Catalogue
Level 2 NCI Data Catalogue
Example Python Code: How to access and analyse level 1 data
Get help
View the parent NCI Data Catalogue entry
Find the identification number of a radar (rq0 project)
Check out the beam blockage maps for the lowest sweep of each radar
Questions? Email aurahelp@bom.gov.au