Implementation and Validation of Range Imaging on a UHF Radar Wind Profiler

Authors

P. B. Chilson, University of Colorado and NOAA Environmental Technology LaboratoryFollow
Tian-You Yu, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder
Richard G. Strauch, University of Colorado and NOAA Environmental Technology Laboratory
Andreas Muschinski, University of Colorado and NOAA Environmental Technology Laboratory
Robert D. Palmer, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Date of this Version

2002

Citation

JULY 2003 CHILSON ET AL. 987-996

Comments

2003 American Meteorological Society

Abstract

The available range resolution of pulsed radar wind profilers is usually limited by bandwidth restrictions. Range imaging (RIM) has recently been developed as a means of mitigating these limitations by operating the wind profilers over a small set of distinct transmitter frequencies. A constrained optimization method can then be used to generate high-resolution maps of the reflectivity field as a function of range. This paper presents a description of how the RIM technique has been recently implemented on the Platteville 915-MHz tropospheric profiler, the first such implementation at UHF. Examples of data collected during a two-part experiment on 10 April 2001 using the Platteville 915-MHz tropospheric profiler are presented. In the first part, an intercomparison was made involving measurements from RIM and standard radar techniques. It is shown that available frequency bandwidth can be very effectively utilized through the RIM processing. In the second part of the experiment, RIM was applied to radar observations collected with a short (0.5 􏰗s) transmit pulse. The resulting data include observations of a thin, persistent scattering layer attributed to a subsidence inversion and billows from a Kelvin– Helmholtz instability. Estimates of the width of the layer were found to be as small as 12 m.