Doppler Radar and Analysis for Climate Model Verification and Numerical Weather Prediction
Abstract
Towards the originally proposed research goal, a least square (LS) method was developed for retrieving low-altitude winds from Doppler radar observations. The method was tested with Denver Airport microburst data and the results compared with the previously developed simple adjoint (SA) method. It was found that the LS method was slightly superior to the SA method for the microburst data obtained with fast radar scans, but became inferior to the SA method when the radar scans were twice as long (Qiu and Xu, 1996, Mon. Wea. Rev., 1132-1144). The LS method was further upgraded to including background wind fields and used to improve the initial condition for the ARPS model's short-term prediction. A variational method was also developed to assimilating surface mesonet data and compute the surface fluxes of sensible and latent heat. The new method overcame the drawbacks of conventional Bowen Ratio Energy Balance method and Profile method (PROF). This method made a better and more complete use of the data and the constraints provided by the surface energy balance equation and the similarity profile equations (Xu and Qiu, 1997, J. Appl. Meteor., 3-11). In addition, studies supported by this grant generalized the classic adjoint method for meteorological data assimilation (Xu, 1996, J. Atmos. Sci., 1123-1155, and Xu, 1997, J. Atmos. Sci., 2713-2728).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 27, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA353493
Entities
People
- Qin Xu
- Richard J. Doviak
Organizations
- Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations