 Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the Earth-Observing Laboratory are using weather radars to probe inside the most violent storms on Earth. Wenchao Li, scientist at NCAR tells us more. So what do you do here at NCAR? I'm a scientist and I also lead a facility. What we do is to deploy the radars on the ground and on the aircraft all over the world to observe interesting weather phenomena. This radar we can take it apart and put into eight C containers. So once we ship the C containers to anywhere in the world, we just need diesel fuel so we can power the radar, also a place for our staff to lead. And what is the SPO radar looking at? Looking at heavy rainfall because the SPO radar has a specific capability called depolarization. We can identify the shape and type of the precipitation particles. My personal research is mostly focused on airborne radars. We do have a 0.3 centimeter wavelength radar mounted under the wing of the NCAR G5 aircraft and it can fly up to about 45,000 feet. You mentioned that you had to go through training in order to go on these flights. Every scientist and engineer before they fly on the NRLP3 they have to pass a swim test what the Navy calls survival training. This is a picture after we went through the training everybody was so happy and give a thumb up. And did you have to wear all of this while doing the swim training? Yes the most difficult part is wearing all these gears and you have to prove you can float in the swimming pool for two minutes. Meteorologists still have difficulties predicting these storms and one way to improve our predictability is to understand what's inside a storm. The radar has a wavelength on the microwave just like the microwave in your house which in heat or lunch but the microwave can penetrate inside a storm. So we can actually use the microwave to see the detailed structure so we can give the forecaster more information more clues when they have to issue a prediction.