Bird migration monitoring across Europe using weather radar

It has recently been shown that weather radars can be used to monitor bird migration for single
radars. Given the recent developments in the OPERA network on harmonization of radar practices
and data formats, it is becoming increasingly feasible to use this technique for monitoring bird
migration across Europe. Reflections from birds (around -10 dBZ) are generally much weaker and more sensitive to disturbances, such as noise and clutter, than those from weather. These disturbances vary from radar to radar, because of different radar types (e.g. signal to noise ratio) and siting (e.g. clutter). It is therefore not straightforward to apply existing algorithms for bird detection to data from different radars. This means that the extent to which different radars in the network are suitable for bird migration monitoring may vary. The challenge is to adapt the existing algorithm so that it can cope with these varying radar characteristics and yield consistent bird migration data for all radars in the network.