WSR-88D reflectivity quality control using horizontal and vertical reflectivity structure

Non-meteorological radar returns contribute significantly to the contamination of precipitation estimates derived from meteorological radar observations. These non-meteorological targets include ground and sea clutter due to normal or anomalous radar beam propagation, biological targets such as birds and insects, electronic interferences, etc. These non-meteorological scatters or contaminations have a negative impact on downstream applications and products such as precipitation estimates and severe weather cell attributes. An automated algorithm has been developed that segregates precipitation and non-precipitation echoes using both horizontal and vertical structures of the volumetric reflectivity field. The new reflectivity QC algorithm was tested across a spectrum of meteorological and non-meteorological reflectivity cases resulting in a significant improvement over the current approaches in the WSR-88D precipitation process system. The new QC algorithm is currently running routinely as part of National Severe Storm Laboratory’s National Mosaic and Multi-sensor QPE (NM2Q) project for which case examples will be shown.