A Real Time Method to Diagnose and Mitigate Horizontal and Vertical Noise Degradation in the WSR-88D Network

Quality controlling weather radar data is important to ensure accurate estimates of hydrometeors in the atmosphere. Over the past several decades, many efforts have been made to mitigate sources of contamination from radar data. However, these efforts are, primarily, concerned with post-processing of weather data, rather than determining whether the hardware itself has contributed to weather data errors. This research shows that when the vertical noise information becomes degraded beyond a qualitatively-determined threshold, dual-polarization moments become unreliable. Furthermore, if the horizontal noise information becomes degraded, then single- and dual-polarized moments become unusable. Several different instances of data degradation are presented, and how these impact reflectivity, differential reflectivity, and hydrometeor classification algorithms (HCA’s) which, in turn, can impact quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE’s). A method to determine when these instances occur in real-time and potential mitigation strategies have been developed and will be presented.