High Resolution Airborne Radar Measurements of Hurricane Isabel

The Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (IWRAP) is a dual-frequency, conically-scanning Doppler radar that measures high resolution profiles of rain's effective reflectivity Ze and Doppler velocity, as well as surface wind vectors via scatterometry. IWRAP was flown aboard a NOAA WP-3D aircraft during the 2003, 2004, and 2005 hurricane seasons as part of the ONR's Coupled Boundary Layers Air-Sea Transfer (CBLAST) experiment, NASA's Ocean Vector Winds research, and the NOAA/NESDIS Ocean Winds and Rain experiments. We will start with a description of IWRAP and its capabilities. Following this we will introduce a new dataset available to the CBLAST community. We will finish with high resolution radar observations of Hurricane Isabel with an emphasis on the 3-D structure of the storm, especially in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). In particular, IWRAP will be shown to be effective at resolving linear boundary layer structures.