A Practical Approach for Determining Multi-Dimensional Spatial Rainfall Scaling Relations Using High Resolution Time Height Doppler Data from a Single Mobile Vertical Pointing Radar
Rain occurs over a wide range of spatial scales. The challenge is to connect certain fine scale needs to the available large scale observations from radars, satellites or coarse grid numerical weather predictions. This is the problem of rescaling of the rainfall. Whatever approach is used, it requires a knowledge of rainfall scales over a wide range of possible dimensions from tens of meters to kilometers. It is also desirable to have measurements at different locations and under different meteorological settings. Such measurements are not necessarily readily obtainable, requiring extensive and usually fixed and expensive networks of multiple instruments over large areas. A mobile and less expensive alternative is the, Micro-Rain Radars (MRR). We illustrate this using observations of the Doppler spectra of falling rain every 10 m vertically and 10 second temporally over intervals varying from 15 up to 41 minutes collected at Wallop’s Island Virginia and Charleston South Carolina using two different MRR. An objective method to estimate advection velocity was developed so that the time-height profiles could be transformed into height-horizontal distance profiles in order to calculate scaling relations. Thus, MRR and other Doppler radars may obviate the need for networks of instruments.
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Subject: Environmental and Earth Sciences - Atmospheric Science and Meteorology
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