Networked Sensing for Dual-Doppler Wind Velocity Measurement

During the 2008 Spring Experiment, the IP1 radar network was operated in a networked sensing mode for dual-Doppler wind velocity measurements, to take advantage of the overlapping coverage for multiple-Doppler synthesis.  Of the four IP1 radar nodes, multiple candidate pairs exist for most of the IP1 coverage.  The system resource is optimized to issue the next scan task for measuring wind vectors of the detected features.  The best dual-Doppler observation pair is evaluated on the fly during each system heart beat, which serves the best look angles for dual-Doppler synthesis as well as satisfies range and elevation constraints.  Two-dimensional horizontal wind fields have been operationally generated in real-time during the weather events.  This horizontal wind product will be sent to the forecasters and emergency managers to peruse for operational use.  The retrieved wind velocity can be used to improve the kinematical analysis of severe storms.  The MC&C system is fully geared for dual-Doppler observations, with a specific dual-Doppler task routinely conducted where the radars were operated within an extended heart beat at 2.5 minutes to cover the storm top at higher vertical resolution.  The closed-loop system can be switched between regular 1-minute standard task and the special 2.5-minute dual-Doppler task.  This infrastructure development was a joint effort from all the research thrusts of CASA.  The radar data are collected in each node and transported to a remote server which runs system level algorithms to synthesize wind vectors.

Two-dimensional horizontal wind vectors around a hook observed from the 2/10/09 storm