Evaluation of a convective storm sampling strategy for the ARM profiler network

The long-term record of wind profiler observations for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program at the Southern Great Plains (SGP) field site has been greatly underutilized by the ARM science community. An attempt to revitalize interest of the ARM science community in the use the wind profiler data lead us to recommend a change of the sampling strategy to convert the existing systems to low-cost profiling precipitation-type radars. A one-year redeployment of two ARM 915-MHz radar wind profilers with collocated disdrometers was performed to locations within the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) IP-1 scanning radar array and within the area covered by the National Weather Service S-band polarimetric testbed radar (KOUN) in the southwestern quadrant of the SGP domain. The primary goal of the intensive operational period (IOP) is to collect a long-term dataset on convective cloud vertical velocities and precipitating cloud microphysics from multiple, independent instruments and therein evaluate the viability of the wind profiler systems in this new configuration. A secondary emphasis was to explore the usefulness of these vertical velocity measurements in convective clouds for use as validation of multi-Doppler retrievals of convective vertical velocity measurements. This study presents the initial findings of the deployment through spring and early summer warm season events at SGP.