Vertical Air Motion Retrievals From Airborne $W$ -Band Cloud Radar
In-cloud vertical air motion is a key parameter to describe cloud dynamics and lifecycles. Short-wavelength ( $Ka$ - and $W$ -band) radars are often used to observe clouds and extract the vertical air motion from the radar-measured Doppler velocity. However, the vertical air motion retrieval techniq...
Published in: | IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing |
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Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2023.3322346 https://doaj.org/article/ccede964d80e403eb9df5d6e7085b1ad |
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:ccede964d80e403eb9df5d6e7085b1ad 2023-12-10T09:51:49+01:00 Vertical Air Motion Retrievals From Airborne $W$ -Band Cloud Radar Haonan Chen Christopher W. Fairall Christopher R. Williams Elizabeth J. Thompson 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2023.3322346 https://doaj.org/article/ccede964d80e403eb9df5d6e7085b1ad EN eng IEEE https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10272668/ https://doaj.org/toc/2151-1535 2151-1535 doi:10.1109/JSTARS.2023.3322346 https://doaj.org/article/ccede964d80e403eb9df5d6e7085b1ad IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Vol 16, Pp 9350-9357 (2023) Airborne Doppler radar air motion retrieval Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) cloud microphysics <named-content xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" content-type="math" xlink:type="simple"> $W$ </named-content>-band Ocean engineering TC1501-1800 Geophysics. Cosmic physics QC801-809 article 2023 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2023.3322346 2023-11-12T01:39:54Z In-cloud vertical air motion is a key parameter to describe cloud dynamics and lifecycles. Short-wavelength ( $Ka$ - and $W$ -band) radars are often used to observe clouds and extract the vertical air motion from the radar-measured Doppler velocity. However, the vertical air motion retrieval techniques developed using ground-based radar Doppler spectrum may be problematic for airborne cloud radars due to nonideal radar system performance (e.g., receiver saturation) and the Doppler velocity measurement uncertainties caused by aircraft motion, aircraft speed, and the large aircraft motion induced horizontal wind. This article presents a new and simple approach for estimating the in-cloud vertical air motion using airborne $W$ -band radar measurements, which is applicable to cloud measurements without precipitation or with weak precipitation. In particular, a power-law relation between cloud and precipitation particle fall speed and attenuation corrected radar reflectivity is established first. Then, the particle fall speeds estimated from radar reflectivity using the established power-law relation are compared with the radar-measured Doppler velocities to derive the vertical air motions. This technique is demonstrated with $W$ -band airborne radar measurements from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign from January to February 2020, which was designed to investigate atmospheric shallow convection and air-sea interaction in the tropical North Atlantic east of Barbados. The retrieved in-cloud air motion is compared with results reported in the literature for a nearby domain, suggesting that this simple retrieval technique performs reasonably well. Since this approach is applicable for airborne radar measurements with high-frequency noises, it can be used as an effective tool for investigating the mean profile of vertical air motion. Article in Journal/Newspaper North Atlantic Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing 16 9350 9357 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
Airborne Doppler radar air motion retrieval Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) cloud microphysics <named-content xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" content-type="math" xlink:type="simple"> $W$ </named-content>-band Ocean engineering TC1501-1800 Geophysics. Cosmic physics QC801-809 |
spellingShingle |
Airborne Doppler radar air motion retrieval Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) cloud microphysics <named-content xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" content-type="math" xlink:type="simple"> $W$ </named-content>-band Ocean engineering TC1501-1800 Geophysics. Cosmic physics QC801-809 Haonan Chen Christopher W. Fairall Christopher R. Williams Elizabeth J. Thompson Vertical Air Motion Retrievals From Airborne $W$ -Band Cloud Radar |
topic_facet |
Airborne Doppler radar air motion retrieval Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) cloud microphysics <named-content xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" content-type="math" xlink:type="simple"> $W$ </named-content>-band Ocean engineering TC1501-1800 Geophysics. Cosmic physics QC801-809 |
description |
In-cloud vertical air motion is a key parameter to describe cloud dynamics and lifecycles. Short-wavelength ( $Ka$ - and $W$ -band) radars are often used to observe clouds and extract the vertical air motion from the radar-measured Doppler velocity. However, the vertical air motion retrieval techniques developed using ground-based radar Doppler spectrum may be problematic for airborne cloud radars due to nonideal radar system performance (e.g., receiver saturation) and the Doppler velocity measurement uncertainties caused by aircraft motion, aircraft speed, and the large aircraft motion induced horizontal wind. This article presents a new and simple approach for estimating the in-cloud vertical air motion using airborne $W$ -band radar measurements, which is applicable to cloud measurements without precipitation or with weak precipitation. In particular, a power-law relation between cloud and precipitation particle fall speed and attenuation corrected radar reflectivity is established first. Then, the particle fall speeds estimated from radar reflectivity using the established power-law relation are compared with the radar-measured Doppler velocities to derive the vertical air motions. This technique is demonstrated with $W$ -band airborne radar measurements from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign from January to February 2020, which was designed to investigate atmospheric shallow convection and air-sea interaction in the tropical North Atlantic east of Barbados. The retrieved in-cloud air motion is compared with results reported in the literature for a nearby domain, suggesting that this simple retrieval technique performs reasonably well. Since this approach is applicable for airborne radar measurements with high-frequency noises, it can be used as an effective tool for investigating the mean profile of vertical air motion. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Haonan Chen Christopher W. Fairall Christopher R. Williams Elizabeth J. Thompson |
author_facet |
Haonan Chen Christopher W. Fairall Christopher R. Williams Elizabeth J. Thompson |
author_sort |
Haonan Chen |
title |
Vertical Air Motion Retrievals From Airborne $W$ -Band Cloud Radar |
title_short |
Vertical Air Motion Retrievals From Airborne $W$ -Band Cloud Radar |
title_full |
Vertical Air Motion Retrievals From Airborne $W$ -Band Cloud Radar |
title_fullStr |
Vertical Air Motion Retrievals From Airborne $W$ -Band Cloud Radar |
title_full_unstemmed |
Vertical Air Motion Retrievals From Airborne $W$ -Band Cloud Radar |
title_sort |
vertical air motion retrievals from airborne $w$ -band cloud radar |
publisher |
IEEE |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2023.3322346 https://doaj.org/article/ccede964d80e403eb9df5d6e7085b1ad |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Vol 16, Pp 9350-9357 (2023) |
op_relation |
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10272668/ https://doaj.org/toc/2151-1535 2151-1535 doi:10.1109/JSTARS.2023.3322346 https://doaj.org/article/ccede964d80e403eb9df5d6e7085b1ad |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2023.3322346 |
container_title |
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing |
container_volume |
16 |
container_start_page |
9350 |
op_container_end_page |
9357 |
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1784897651247939584 |