92nd American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Wednesday, 25 January 2012: 5:15 PM
The NCAR 449 MHz Modular Wind Profiler Development
Room 239 (New Orleans Convention Center )
William O. J. Brown, NCAR, Boulder, CO; and S. A. Cohn and B. Lindseth

NCAR / EOL is developing a new wind profiler network to expand it's capability to observe the boundary layer and troposphere. EOL has deployed its existing four 915-MHz wind profilers on over 40 field projects over the last 20 years, however has only had limited flexibility with these boundary layer profilers to meet the widely varying needs of these diverse field programs. The new wind profiler consists of a set of modular panels that can be operated together in various groupings to provide flexible profiling capability at a range of scales. For example, the modules could be deployed as multiple small radars to study the boundary layer over an extended area. Alternatively, the modules could be combined together to create a larger radar capable of probing higher into the atmosphere. The new wind profiler operates at 449 MHz, and features a low side-lobe antenna design, scalable electronics and advanced signal processing methods. A prototype 3-module boundary layer system has already been developed and successfully deployed during the recent PCAPS (Persistent Cold Air Pool Study) experiment in the Salt Lake valley, and preliminary results will be presented. The system is currently being expanded to 7 modules. Ultimately at least 19 modules are proposed, which would allow six (3-module) boundary layer profilers, or two (7-module) mid-troposphere profilers, or one (19-module) full troposphere profiler to be deployed. The new system would be deployed with lidars and other sensors and is intended to meet the diverse needs for the studies of the surface layer, boundary layer, free troposphere, and tropopause, and thus support a broad range of meteorological and climate research.

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