Building observational targets from scanning weather radars

Fine scale models are used to understand atmospheric processes and to construct parameterizations for un-resolved processes in coarser (Global and Single Column) models. It is essential that these fine scale models be constrained by observations of the real atmosphere. However, due to the stochastic nature of convective systems simple one-to-one comparisons are not often possible. To this end a series of observational targets for fine scale models must be developed. These targets represent a common ground between what is achievable from the model and retrievable from the remote sensors. This presentation will show precipitation morphology based targets from the Scanning ARM Precipitation Sensitive Radars and and the Weather Forecasting and Research cloud resolving model. Data from a variety of sites will be analyzed using a variety of microphysical schemes and modeling paradigms.