Challenges of Combining Remote Sensing with In-situ Measurements in Airborne Science and Engineering

Airborne weather radar as a remote sensor has been important for both scientific observations and aviation safety. Calibration of airborne radars has been done extensively by comparing them with ground radars. Recently, motivated by the challenges of verifying critical cloud physics models and developing radar standards for the high-ice-water-content (HIWC) detections, more flight operations combining forward-looking X-band radars with microphysical probes are performed by NASA, which has initiated integrating radar and probe measurements at similar locations for the modeling and verifications. This operation was ground-breaking while limited by the capability of the airborne radar used in the flight mission. As a follow-on effort for such verification operation, the Intelligent Aerospace Radar Team (IART) at the University of Oklahoma is developing a dual-polarized version of the forward-looking radar in collaboration with Garmin International, called PARADOX 1.5. PARADOX 1.5 can be installed on different existing aircraft platforms equipped with atmospheric probes and imagers. It uses a small, low-cost aperture with dual polarization and can generate basic dual-polarized weather radar moment products in the required ranges. Although PARADOX 1.5 is suitable for joint remote-in situ missions in the near term, the newer version of the system, PARADOX 2.0, would use electronic scanning low-cost polarimetric phased array as its RF aperture. This presentation provides the current data collection from initial PARADOX ground tests, its multi-mission potential, and the concept designs of PARADOX 2.0. Further, the presentation focuses on the existing data quality control, correlation processing, and physical-modeling solutions based on the current remote-in situ operation data.