Improving Severe Weather Nowcasting with New Vaisala DIAL Atmospheric Profiler

It is known that high-resolution humidity profile within boundary layer is essential parameter for the severe weather nowcasting. The brand new Vaisala broadband Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) is targeted to help enhance numerical weather prediction (NWP) to provide more accurate severe weather and flood predictions. This requires data products not typically found in ceilometers.

While globally coordinated upper-air observations obtain an overall picture of humidity patterns, this new innovative solution continuously measures water vapor within the boundary layer in any location and under any conditions. When combined with weather and climate modeling, the information can enhance nowcasting and forecasting to detect the most severe storms with superior reliability and accuracy.

Our aim is to provide needed information with real-life examples how the Vaisala DIAL is to serve NWP data assimilation in future. We will also introduce the measurement principle of the Vaisala DIAL. The pre-production DIAL has been at many customer pilots and demo measurement campaigns all over the world. The comparisons have been made against radio sounding and Raman Lidars, and we will share the experiences with comparison results in this presentation.

Vaisala’s DIAL makes vertical water vapor profiling accessible by utilizing these core features:

Advanced modeling and data assimilation allow near real-time information for nowcasting and long-term modeling through Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP).

Autonomous, easy setup and use for localized forecasting. No operator is needed, and little-to-no maintenance is required.

Uninterrupted and secure operation 24/7, keeping robust design and cyber data security top of mind.

These features will enable DIALs to be used more widely in large operational networks and have an impact on more accurate mesoscale weather forecasting.