Weather radar ground clutter. Part I: Identification, modeling, and simulation

Real-time ground-clutter identification and subsequent filtering of clutter-contaminated data is addressed in this two-part paper. Part I focuses on the identification, modeling, and simulation of S-band ground-clutter echo. A new clutter identification parameter, clutter phase alignment (CPA), is presented. CPA is a measure primarily of the phase variability of the in-phase and quadrature-phase time series samples for a given radar resolution volume. CPA is also a function of amplitude variability of the time series. It is shown that CPA is an excellent discriminator of ground clutter versus precipitation echoes. A typically used weather model, time series simulator is shown to inadequately describe experimentally observed CPA. Thus, a new technique for the simulation of ground-clutter echo is developed that better predicts the experimentally observed CPA. Experimental data from the Denver Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) at the Denver, Colorado, Front Range Airport (KFTG), and NCAR’s S-band dual-polarization Doppler radar (S-Pol) are used to illustrate CPA. In Part II, CPA is used in a fuzzy logic algorithm for improved clutter identification.

To Access Resource:

Questions? Email Resource Support Contact:

  • opensky@ucar.edu
    UCAR/NCAR - Library

Resource Type publication
Temporal Range Begin N/A
Temporal Range End N/A
Temporal Resolution N/A
Bounding Box North Lat N/A
Bounding Box South Lat N/A
Bounding Box West Long N/A
Bounding Box East Long N/A
Spatial Representation N/A
Spatial Resolution N/A
Related Links N/A
Additional Information N/A
Resource Format PDF
Standardized Resource Format PDF
Asset Size N/A
Legal Constraints

Copyright 2009 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.
Access Constraints None
Software Implementation Language N/A

Resource Support Name N/A
Resource Support Email opensky@ucar.edu
Resource Support Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library
Distributor N/A
Metadata Contact Name N/A
Metadata Contact Email opensky@ucar.edu
Metadata Contact Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library

Author Hubbert, J.
Dixon, M.
Ellis, S.
Meymaris, G.
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2009-07-01T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier N/A
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
Progress N/A
Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:57:07.283131
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:15259
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Hubbert, J., Dixon, M., Ellis, S., Meymaris, G.. (2009). Weather radar ground clutter. Part I: Identification, modeling, and simulation. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7xw4kts. Accessed 18 June 2025.

Harvest Source