Front Detection with Doppler Radar
Abstract
A technique to detect wind discontinuities associated with gust and synoptic fronts. It first transforms the Doppler velocity and reflectivity data into gradient vector fields by applying a series of templates to the data. From these vector fields, regions with large gradient magnitudes are isolated and edges or contours extracted where both the magnitude and direction information are used. A bi-directional search orthogonal to the local gradient vector is performed to extract lines of strong gradients. A multiplicity of somewhat parallel lines are often produced, with these being reduced to a single line through the selection of the most significant of these lines. The technique utilized in this study is a fast, efficient means of detecting large gradient regions in any two-dimensional field. It has been successfully applied to both Doppler velocity and reflectivity factor fields. It is shown that individual analyses of these two fields results in only partial detection of the feature. However, when they are combined into a single product, the result is a continuous depiction. This latter product is readily amendable for the application of a variety of forecast tools.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 15, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA242880
Entities
People
- Donald Hamann