Doppler radar wind field retrieval over the Po Valley

Abstract. Although methods of using multiple Doppler radars to study wind fields have long been proposed, and many research studies have been made, very few operational radar operators adopt methods which require the use of specific scanning strategies to allow the extraction of wind information. Here we report a collaborative study on dual-Doppler radars based on two Doppler radars in the Po valley, Italy. Unusually, the radars are only about 90 km apart, though operated by the same authority. The wind field syntheses are carried out on a 30 km by 30 km region where the two radars have overlapping scan coverage. An iterative method based on the linear wind model and the equation of mass continuity is used to construct the wind fields. The methodology has been validated by two different methods. The first method is to reconstruct the radial wind observed by each radar, and the second method is calculating and comparing the along-track component with that derived from the observations. Both two comparisons show good agreement with the original data.