Potential pitfalls in mobile dual-Doppler analyses of complex severe storm wind fields

Some errors inherent to dual-Doppler synthesis are well-known, such as the large increase in error as the beam crossing angle decreases. However, other errors are more subtle but potentially as detrimental to the interpretation of storm dynamics, particularly in complex wind fields such as those surrounding a tornado. Many of these are specific to mobile radar deployments, such as those carried out in the VORTEX2 experiment, including errors in beam pointing angle, elevation errors, mismatching of beam heights, and differing ranges from the two radars to the feature of interest. In this paper, we highlight some examples of these sources of error using idealized fields and suggest methods for mitigating them in the synthesis stage as well as in further analysis stages such as trajectory calculations.