Meteorological applications of radar

Abstract

Radar has been used by meteorologists for 30 years or so but it is only during the latter half of this period that the full measure of its versatility has come to be recognised. Operationally important techniques have been or are being developed to identify and track severe storms, to provide warning of tornadoes, to measure and forecast rainfall quantitatively, and to measure winds, turbulence and wind shear. At the same time research meteorologists are using specialised radar techniques to investigate many poorly understood aspects of atmospheric behaviour : to identify the physics of clear air turbulence, the dynamics of fronts, the structure of the atmospheric boundary layer, the three-dimensional airflow and trajectories of hailstones in thunderstorms, and the patterns of precipitation within mid-latitude depressions. Studies such as these are giving fresh impetus to a branch of meteorology, mesoscale meteorology, which largely because of the difficulty of obtaining definitive observations has hitherto been a neglected field. This review highlights the strengths and limitations of radar as a tool for observing the atmosphere and attempts to provide a balanced view of its many applications in meteorology.

Quantifying radar-rainfall uncertainties in urban drainage flow modelling

“…However, radar rainfall (RR) measurements are affected by various sources of error as discussed in different studies (e.g. Browning, 1978;Krajewski and Smith, 2002;. Quality control and correction techniques can certainly improve the estimation of precipitation using weather radar (Harrison et al, 2000(Harrison et al, , 2009Fulton et al, 1998).…”

Statistical analysis of error propagation from radar rainfall to hydrological models

“…However, the advantage of the weather radar rainfall estimates has been limited by a variety of sources of uncertainty in the radar reflectivity process, including random and systematic errors such as the hardware calibration, which acquires accurate measurements of transmitted power, bandwidth, antenna gain, wavelength and pulse width (ProbertJones, 1962;Battan, 1973), the deflection of the radar beam (anomalous propagation), non-meteorological echoes (clutter), signal attenuation, orographic enhancement, radar beam overshooting, variation of the vertical profile of reflectivity (VPR), extrapolation of the measurements to the ground, drop size distribution, Z-R relationship, sampling effects and bright band, all of which can be referred to in the numerous discussions on radar rainfall estimation errors (Harrold et al, 1974;Browning, 1978;Wilson and Brandes, 1979;Duncan et al, 1993;Fabry et al, 1992Fabry et al, , 1994Kitchen, 1997;Krajewski and Smith, 2002;Rico-Ramirez et al, 2007).…”

A review of radar observations of the troposphere in clear air conditions

“…This disadvantage may be overcome with a scanning radar. Figure 10 is a sequence of RHI scans showing a number of clear-air layers modulated by mountain lee waves [Browning, 1978]. This particular train of waves was stationary and relatively undamped with distance downstream.…”