Dual-Doppler Wind Analysis of Low-level Mesocyclones Verified against StickNet Wind Observations

It is well known that dual-Doppler analysis provides relatively accurate high-resolution wind data. Unfortunately caveats arising from limitations of observation and technique limit the robustness of the resulting wind field. These caveats include differences between the two radars (e.g., sampling differences in range/azimuthal resolution and scan time, elevation differences, crossing angle) and retrieval methodology (e.g., manner of iteration between the solution of horizontal and vertical wind, boundary conditions, strength of constraints). As such, it is useful to verify the accuracy of these methods to gauge their applicability.

Texas Tech University's Ka-band radars (TTUKa) provided dual-Doppler coverage of numerous low-level mesocyclones as they crossed over StickNet arrays during the VORTEX2 campaign. A typical StickNet deployment had probes every 1.5 to 3 km providing kinematic and thermodynamic measurements of target supercells. This study will use popular dual-Doppler techniques to compute the horizontal near surface wind field within TTUKa dual-Doppler lobes. The StickNet wind data will be used to verify the resultant dual-Doppler wind field and help identify causes of determined error.