The project Precipitation and ATTenuation Estimates from a high resolution weather Radar Network (PATTERN) intends to demonstrate that a network of High Resolution Weather Radars (HRWR) can overcome this apparent drawback. Therefore, the University of Hamburg and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology set up a network consisting of four modified ship navigation radars near Hamburg, Germany. The network is operational since January 2012. Each radar has a maximum range of 20 km with 60 m spatial and 30 s temporal resolution. A large area in the network is covered by at least two radars at the border and up to four radars in the center. Several rain stations consisting of a Micro Rain Radar (MRR) and a rain gauge complement the network. These stations are used to calibrate and evaluate the quality of the X-Band radars.
The aim of this presentation is to identify advantages and disadvantages of the network as well as single X-Band radars. We will give a short description of the algorithms used to derive precipitation from reflectivity measurements with a focus on those algorithms exploiting the benefits of having a network, e.g. for clutter removal and replacing disturbed pixels by measurements from other radars instead of interpolating. A comparison to measurements of the weather radar operating in C-Band used by the German Weather Service will focus on the ability of high resolution observations to give information about small scale structures of rain events. Furthermore, we will describe the specifications of the modified HRWR systems as well as the design of the network.
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