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Title: Vertical air motion retrievals in deep convective clouds using the ARM scanning radar network in Oklahoma during MC3E

Journal Article · · Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (Online)
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4];  [5]; ORCiD logo [6]
  1. McGill Univ., Montreal, QC (Canada). Dept of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
  2. Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
  3. Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences; Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). Dept. of Environmental and Climate Sciences
  4. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). Dept. of Environmental and Climate Sciences
  5. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Environmental Science Division
  6. Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK (United States). Cooperative Inst. for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, and School of Meteorology, NOAA/OAR/National Severe Storms Lab.
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The US Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program's Southern Great Plains (SGP) site includes a heterogeneous distributed scanning Doppler radar network suitable for collecting coordinated Doppler velocity measurements in deep convective clouds. The surrounding National Weather Service (NWS) Next Generation Weather Surveillance Radar 1988 Doppler (NEXRAD WSR-88D) further supplements this network. Radar velocity measurements are assimilated in a three-dimensional variational (3DVAR) algorithm that retrieves horizontal and vertical air motions over a large analysis domain (100 km × 100 km) at storm-scale resolutions (250 m). For the first time, direct evaluation of retrieved vertical air velocities with those from collocated 915 MHz radar wind profilers is performed. Mean absolute and root-mean-square differences between the two sources are of the order of 1 and 2 m s-1, respectively, and time–height correlations are of the order of 0.5. An empirical sensitivity analysis is done to determine a range of 3DVAR constraint weights that adequately satisfy the velocity observations and anelastic mass continuity. It is shown that the vertical velocity spread over this range is of the order of 1 m s-1. The 3DVAR retrievals are also compared to those obtained from an iterative upwards integration technique. The results suggest that the 3DVAR technique provides a robust, stable solution for cases in which integration techniques have difficulty satisfying velocity observations and mass continuity simultaneously.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0012704; AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1376172
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1395009
Report Number(s):
BNL-114147-2017-JA; R&D Project: 2016-BNL-EE630EECA-Budg; KP1701000
Journal Information:
Atmospheric Measurement Techniques (Online), Vol. 10, Issue 8; ISSN 1867-8548
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 24 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (6)

Investigation of observational error sources in multi-Doppler-radar three-dimensional variational vertical air motion retrievals journal January 2019
Calibration of the 2007–2017 record of Atmospheric Radiation Measurements cloud radar observations using CloudSat journal January 2019
Dependence of Vertical Alignment of Cloud and Precipitation Properties on Their Effective Fall Speeds journal February 2019
A Sparse Denoising-Based Super-Resolution Method for Scanning Radar Imaging journal July 2021
The Cloud-resolving model Radar SIMulator (CR-SIM) Version 3.3: description and applications of a virtual observatory journal January 2020
Use of polarimetric radar measurements to constrain simulated convective cell evolution: a pilot study with Lagrangian tracking journal January 2019

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