The University of Massachusetts (UMass), working with NOAA/AOML/HRD, NOAA/NESDIS/ORA and NOAA/OMAO/AOC participated in the 2003 Hurricane Program Field Program (HPF) and the NESDIS Hurricane Ocean Winds and Rain Experiment. UMass installed its Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (IWRAP) and its Simultaneous Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) on the NOAA N42RF WP-3D aircraft. IWRAP is a C and Ku-band conically scanning Doppler radar that acquires volume reflectivity and Doppler velocity profiles simultaneously at four incidence angles. The rain rate and surface wind field can be derived from the surface backscatter imagery collected with each profile. The Doppler profiles at each incidence angle and conical scan can be mapped to a three dimensional grid. For each cell, Doppler measurements at the four incidence angles and multiple azimuth angles are acquired, so the three components of the winds can be estimated.

During the 2003 experiments, eight missions were flown through Hurricanes Fabian and Isabel during various phases of these systems. From these measurements, and using the above technique, high resolution surface and 3-D atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) wind fields from the Doppler measurements of precipitation are presented. These are compared to coincident surface wind speed measurements provided by SFMR, flight level wind measurements and GPS dropsonde winds.