Advanced DWL data processing with tornado and tropical cyclone applications

The use of Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) in the investigation of severe weather phenomena has lead to significant improvements in the processing of the raw signal into useful observations of winds, aerosols and precipitation. In 2008, a 1.6 um coherent DWL was flown on a Navy P3 aircraft to study the genesis and evolution of tropical cyclones, including four fully developed typhoons. In 2010, a 2 um coherent DWL previously used as an airborne system (on Navy Twin Otter) was installed on the same ground-based vehicle as was a phased array K band radar. This mobile, and first of its kind facility, was used during the VORTEX2 field campaign in June 2010. The clouds, chaotic ocean surfaces and severe platform motions during the Typhoon investigations lead to more robust signal processing and data products for airborne severe weather research and applications. The extremely high winds, shear and precipitation associated with supercell storms and tornados presented another set of challenges to the signal processing and data interpretation of DWL returns. We will describe these data processing advances and present examples of the findings from both the typhoon and tornado research experiments.