Effects of Tunable Data Compression on Geophysical Products Retrieved from Surface Radar Observations with Applications to Spaceborne Meteorological Radars

This paper presents results and analyses of applying an international space data compression standard to weather radar measurements that can easily span 8 orders of magnitude and typically require a large storage capacity as well as significant bandwidth for transmission. By varying the degree of the data compression, we analyzed the non-linear response of models that relate measured radar reflectivity and/or Doppler spectra to the moments and properties of the particle size distribution characterizing clouds and precipitation. Preliminary results for the meteorologically important phenomena of clouds and light rain indicate that for a 0.5 dB calibration uncertainty, typical for the ground-based pulsed-Doppler 94 GHz (or 3.2 mm, W-band) weather radar used as a proxy for spaceborne radar in this study, a lossless compression ratio of only 1.2 is achievable. However, further analyses of the non-linear response of various models of rainfall rate, liquid water content and median volume diameter show that a lossy data compression ratio exceeding 15 is realizable. The exploratory analyses presented are relevant to future satellite missions, where the transmission bandwidth is premium and storage requirements of vast volumes of data, potentially problematic

Cloud radar with hybrid mode towards estimation of shape and orientation of ice crystals

This paper is devoted to the experimental quantitative characterization of the shape and orientation distribution of ice particles in clouds. The characterization is based on measured and modeled elevation dependencies of the polarimetric parameters differential reflectivity and correlation coefficient. The polarimetric data are obtained using a newly developed 35 GHz cloud radar MIRA-35 with hybrid polarimetric configuration and scanning capabilities. The full procedure chain of the technical implementation and the realization of the setup of the hybrid-mode cloud radar for the shape determination are presented. This includes the description of phase adjustments in the transmitting paths, the introduction of the general data processing scheme, correction of the data for the differences of amplifications and electrical path lengths in the transmitting and receiving channels, the rotation of the polarization basis by 45°, the correction of antenna effects on polarimetric measurements, the determination of spectral polarimetric variables, and the formulation of a scheme to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Modeling of the polarimetric variables is based on existing back-scattering models assuming the spheroidal representation of cloud scatterers. The parameters retrieved from the model are polarizability ratio and degree of orientation, which can be assigned to certain particle orientations and shapes. The developed algorithm is applied to a measurement of the hybrid-mode cloud radar taken on 20 October 2014 in Cabauw, the Netherlands, in the framework of the ACCEPT (Analysis of the Composition of Clouds with Extended Polarization Techniques) campaign. The case study shows the retrieved polarizability ratio and degree of orientation of ice particles for a cloud system of three cloud layers at different heights. Retrieved polarizability ratios are 0.43, 0.85, and 1.5 which correspond to oblate, quasi-spherical, and columnar ice particles, respectively. It is shown that the polarizability ratio is useful for the detection of aggregation/riming processes. The orientation of oblate and prolate particles is estimated to be close to horizontal while quasi-spherical particles were found to be more randomly oriented

Shape-temperature relationship of ice crystals in mixed-phase clouds based on observations with polarimetric cloud radar: Shape-temperature relationship of ice crystals in mixed-phase cloudsbased on observations with polarimetric cloud radar

This thesis is devoted to the experimental quantitative characterization of the shape and orientation distribution of ice particles in clouds. The characterization is based on measured and modeled elevation dependencies of the polarimetric parameters differential reflectivity and correlation coefficient. The polarimetric data is obtained using a newly developed 35-GHz cloud radar MIRA-35 with hybrid polarimetric configuration and scanning capabilities. The full procedure chain of the technical implementation and the realization of the setup of the hybrid-mode cloud radar for the shape determination are presented. This includes the description of phase adjustments in the transmitting paths, the introduction of the general data processing scheme, correction of the data for the differences of amplifications and electrical path lengths in the transmitting and receiving channels, the rotation of the polarization basis by 45°, the correction of antenna effects on polarimetric measurements, the determination of spectral polarimetric variables, and the formulation of a scheme to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Modeling of the polarimetric variables is based on existing backscattering models assuming the spheroidal representation of cloud scatterers. The parameters retrieved from the model are polarizability ratio and degree of orientation, which can be assigned to certain particle orientations and shapes. In the thesis the first quantitative estimations of ice particle shape at the top of liquid-topped clouds are presented. Analyzed ice particles were formed in the presence of supercooled water and in the temperature range from -20 °C to -3 °C. The estimation is based on polarizability ratios of ice particles measured by the MIRA-35 with hybrid polarimetric configuration, manufactured by METEK GmbH. For the study, 22 cases observed during the ACCEPT (Analysis of the Composition of Clouds with Extended Polarization Techniques) field campaign were used. Polarizability ratios retrieved for cloud layers with cloud-top temperatures of about -5, -8, -15, and -20 °C were 1.6, 0.9, 0.6, and 0.9, respectively. Such values correspond to prolate, quasi-isotropic, oblate, and quasi-isotropic particles, respectively. Data from a free-fall chamber were used for the comparison. A good agreement of detected shapes with well-known shape{temperature dependencies observed in laboratories was found.:1 Introduction 2 Formation and development of ice particles: Laboratory studies and remote observations 2.1 Heterogeneous ice formation in the atmosphere 2.2 Laboratory investigations of ice crystal development 2.3 Polarimetric radar observations of ice microphysics 2.3.1 Polarimetry in weather radar networks 2.3.2 Polarimetry in cloud radars 2.3.3 Polarization coupling 2.4 Aims and scientific questions 3 Effects of antenna patterns on cloud radar polarimetric measurements 3.1 Measurements of complex antenna patterns 3.1.1 Problem definition 3.1.2 Measurement description 3.1.3 Results of antenna pattern measurements 3.2 Correction of LDR measurements 3.3 Discrimination between insects and clouds 4 Cloud radar MIRA-35 with hybrid mode 4.1 Implementation and phase adjustment 4.2 Processing of the coherency matrix 4.3 Correction of the coherency matrix for differences of channels 4.4 The coherency matrix in the slanted basis 4.5 Correction for the antenna coupling 4.6 Spectral polarimetric variables 4.7 Sensitivity issue 5 Shape and orientation retrieval 5.1 Backscattering model 5.2 Retrieval technique 5.3 Case study 6 Shape-temperature relationship of pristine ice crystals 6.1 Instrumentation and data set 6.2 Examples of the shape retrieval 6.2.1 Case 1: 12 October 2014, 15:00-16:00 UTC 6.2.2 Case 2: 18 October 2014, 01:00-02:00 UTC 6.2.3 Case 3: 20 October 2014, 18:00-19:00 UTC 6.2.4 Case 4: 10 November 2014, 02:00-03:00 UTC 6.2.5 Case 5: 7 November 2014, 20:00-21:00 UTC 6.3 Comparison of shape with laboratory studies 6.4 Orientation of pristine ice crystals 7 Summary and outlook Bibliography List of Abbreviations List of Symbol

SPATIAL FILTERING OF CLUTTER USING PHASED ARRAY RADARS FOR OBSERVATIONS OF THE WEATHER

Phased array radars are attractive for weather surveillance primarily because of their capacity for extremely rapid scanning through electronic steering. When combined with the recently developed beam multiplexing technique, these radars can provide significantly improved update rates, which are necessary for monitoring rapidly evolving severe weather. A consequence of beam multiplexing, however, is that a small number of contiguous time series samples are typically used, creating a significant challenge for temporal/spectral filters typically used for clutter mitigation. As a result, the accurate extraction of weather products can become the limiting performance barrier for phased array radars that employ beam multiplexing in clutter-contaminated scattered fields. By exploiting the spatial correlation among the signals from the elements of the phased array antenna, the effect of clutter contamination can be reduced through a processed called spatial filtering . In contrast to conventional temporal filtering, spatial filtering is used to adaptively adjust the antenna beam pattern to produce lower gain in the directions of the undesired clutter signals. In this dissertation, the effect of clutter mitigation using spatial filtering was studied using numerical simulations of a tornadic environment and an array antenna configuration similar to the NSSL NWRT Phased Array Radar for changes in signal-to-noise ratio, clutter-to-signal ratio, number of time series samples, and diagonal loading for three types of clutter sources that include nearly stationary ground clutter, moving targets such as aircraft, and wind turbine clutter, which has recently been documented to be increasingly problematic for radars. Since such data are not currently available from a horizontally pointed phased array weather radar, experimental validation was applied to an existing data set from the Turbulent Eddy Profiler (TEP) developed at University of Massachusetts, which is a vertically pointed phased array radar. Results will show that spatial filtering holds promise for the future of phased array radars for the observation of the weather in a clutter environment