Augmenting CRYSTAL radar observations of precipitation with the NWS WSR 88-D radar network Grant uri icon

abstract

  • One of the main goals of CRYSTAL is to understand the origin, evolution, and dynamics of the anvil clouds emanating from deep convection. A primary means to address this is to study the formation, growth and evolution of the precipitation structure of South Florida convective systems. This requires continuous observations of the precipitation and cloud fields over a large area with high temporal frequency to characterize convective evolution properly. Whereas visible and infrared measurements from geostationary satellite can sample the evolution of cloud top features over large mesoscale regions, no single radar platform can do the job for the precipitation fields. We propose to manage the collection, archival, processing and analysis of the National Weather Service WSR 88-D radars for this purpose, with the goal of producing merged reflectivity and rainfall maps of high temporal resolution covering all of South Florida. Polarimetric measurements at NASA's NPOL radar will be used to "tune" reflectivity - rainfall relations for the 88-D radars, making larger-scale rainfall estimation possible. We also plan to overlay GOES-8 infrared cloud top imagery on the radar images to characterize the co-evolution of the low level precipitation patterns and the extensive anvil cloud formation seen by satellite. These observations will be critical to place aircraft microphysical measurements and ELDORA Doppler radar mass flux estimates in context of overall system lifecycle, and will further be important to guide cloud resolving model simulations of anvil evolution. Funding is requested for P.I. salary, limited graduate student support, a NWS radar data access arrangement with NOAA, and some hardware.

date/time interval

  • February 2002