Operational multiple-Doppler wind synthesis over France

Thanks to the recent deployment of a new staggered triple-PRT scheme within the entire French operational radar network, it has became possible to defeat the long lasting 'Doppler dilemma' and collect high quality Doppler radar data up to a range of 250 km. Since November 2006 these measurements are being processed in real time to derive multiple-Doppler winds in a fully automated way over a large part of the French territory. The resulting 3D wind fields permit to continuously map the dynamic structure of rain events at multiple scales and allow to rapidly identify changes in wind speed and direction with height, as well as to easily spot key flow features such as convergence, wind shear and frontal boundaries. These products, which are being archived to build a weather database, also compose unprecedented datasets for statistical analysis and model verification purposes, especially now that many meteorological centers are working on new high resolution (~2.5 km), limited area, numerical weather prediction systems that will require large amounts of data for validation.