24th Conference on Severe Local Storms

P13.1

An Automatic Tracking and Recognition Algorithm for Thunderstorm Cloud-Cluster (TRACER)

Lan Hongping, Shenzhen Meteorological Observatory, Shenzhen, China

The technique of thunderstorm cloud clusters identification、tracking and early-warning based on Doppler weather radar data is one of the most important techniques of nowcasting. The thunderstorm cloud clusters'borderline-correlation tracking technique(BCTT) discussed in this paper is one of a thunderstorm cloud clusters'extrapolation method which employs the pattern recognition to recognize and topologize the borderlines of the cloud clusters, establish the lifecycles of clouds and their ancestry, so as to extrapolate the movement of thunderstorm cloud clusters. BCTT identifies thunderstorm cloud clusters by their borderlines, then acquires the ancestry of each thunderstorm cloud cluster by six distinguishing factors: quad tree factor、superposition factor、size factor、outside rectangle factor、profile similarity factor、part similarity factor。And the moving direction、velocity、size、strong echo center and other information (strengthening or weakening、swelling or shrinking ) could also be obtained. Then a linearly extrapolation of each thunderstorm cloud cluster can be acquired. This technique can recognize thunderstorms very well, and manage the thunderstorm cloud clusters as objectives. The system of recognizing and tracking thunderstorms automatically("TRACER") developed by the method mentioned above can appoint the cloud cluster based on GIS and capture locality, contrail , evolvement and prediction of the chosen cloud.

extended abstract  Extended Abstract (176K)

Poster Session 13, State of the Art Instrumentation and New Analysis Techniques Posters
Thursday, 30 October 2008, 3:00 PM-4:30 PM, Madison Ballroom

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