Weather Radar Technology Development
Abstract
Techniques have been developed to automatically analyze Doppler weather radar data to detect, assess, and predict weather that adversely affects Air Force operations. Focus has been on severe wind events associated with tornadic storms and hurricanes, wind shear events, large hail, and tracking of precipitation. The energetics of mesocyclones within severe storms have been estimated and used to improve the probability of detection and reduce the false alarm ratio for tornadoes and to discriminate storms producing violent, strong or weak tornadoes. This rotational intensity and the divergence provide very good guidance in determining the potential of large hail production. Of several tested parameters, Potential-Vortex Fit has been found to be accurately discriminate the behavior of hurricanes. This parameter is relatively insensitive to storm location. A new technique for gradient detection has been developed to detect synoptic scale fronts and gust fronts. It is also used with a contour extraction routine based on the Freeman Chain code to monitor and track precipitation regions. These techniques require further research. An efficient and effective two-dimensional velocity dealiasing technique has been developed that successfully treats more than 99% of the data.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 15, 1990
- Accession Number
- ADA233071
Entities
People
- Donald Hamann
- F. I. Harris
- Paul Desrochers
- Ralph J. Donaldson Jr.
- Teresa Bals