The Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching Radar: A Collaboration to Enhance Research and Teaching

Abstract

Overcoming numerous challenges, a unique partnership created two C-band mobile Doppler weather radars capable of accurately measuring both clear-air circulations and damaging winds in heavy rain. Starting with acquisition of two decommissioned 1974 C-band National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Surveillance Radars (WSR-74Cs) in early 1998, a coalition of scientists from the University of Oklahoma (OU), National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), Texas A&M University (TAMU), and Texas Tech University (TTU) embarked on a project to build and deploy two mobile C-band Doppler weather radars for storm-scale research and to enhance graduate and undergraduate education in radar meteorology. This project culminated in the successful development and deployment of the first mobile C-band Doppler weather radar, dubbed SR-1, in 2001 (Fig. 1). To

The Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) Field Campaign

“…The fixed radars were the WSR-88D Doppler radars at Oklahoma City, Frederick, and Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma; Lubbock and Amarillo, Texas; and in Norman, Oklahoma, two S-band radars [KOUN and the multifunction phased array radar (MPAR)]. The available mobile radars were the NOAA/NSSL X-band polarimetric (NOXP) radar and the two C-band Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching (SMART) radars (SR1 and SR2; Biggerstaff et al 2005).…”

Constructing a Merged Cloud–Precipitation Radar Dataset for Tropical Convective Clouds during the DYNAMO/AMIE Experiment at Addu Atoll

“…The Texas A&M SMART-R is a 5-cm (C band), single-polarimetric mobile Doppler radar (Biggerstaff et al 2005) mounted on a diesel flatbed truck. The main purpose of SMART-R was to document the threedimensional structure of precipitation echoes, detailed rainfall patterns, and Doppler measurements of air motions on the convective and mesoscales.…”

Observations of the 10 May 2010 Tornado Outbreak Using OU-PRIME: Potential for New Science with High-Resolution Polarimetric Radar

“…2010 TORNADO OUTBREAK USING OU-PRIME To increase the likelihood of obtaining close observations of supercells and tornadoes, airborne X-band Doppler radars were designed (e.g., Wakimoto et al 1996) and ground-based, mobile Doppler radars operating at W, X, and C bands were designed and mounted on vans and trucks as platforms (e.g., Bluestein and Unruh 1989;Bluestein et al 1995;Wurman et al 1997;Wurman and Randall 2001;Biggerstaff et al 2005;Bluestein et al 2007Bluestein et al , 2010. Such mobile platforms could provide storm-scale observations and, when close to the target storm, substorm-scale and tornadoscale observations.…”