Identification

Title

Real-time low-level wind and temperature analysis using single WSR-88D data

Abstract

A four-dimensional variational Doppler radar analysis system (VDRAS) has been developed and implemented at a weather forecast office to produce real-time boundary layer wind and temperature analyses using WSR-88D radar data. This paper describes significant changes made to convert VDRAS from a research tool to a real-time analysis system and presents results of low-level wind and temperature analysis using operational radar data. In order to produce continuous analyses with time, VDRAS was implemented with a cycling procedure, in which the analysis from the previous cycle is used as a first guess and background for the next cycle. Other enhancements in this real-time system include direct assimilation of data on constant elevation angle levels, addition of mesonet observations, inclusion of an analysis background term, and continuous updating of lateral boundary conditions. An observed case of a line of storms and strong outflow is used to examine the performance of the real-time analysis system and its sensitivity to various system changes. The quality of the analysis for this case is examined by comparing the subsequent 90-min forecast with the observed radial velocity. It is shown that the forecast initialized using the VDRAS analysis outperforms persistence and a forecast using a mesoscale analysis. The accuracy of the retrieved wind in six convective cases is also verified against automated weather reports from commercial aircraft data. The verification shows an average difference of 3.3 m s⁻¹ over these six cases.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d70z73tf

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2001-02-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2001 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.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact