Contaminated Precipitation Radar Echo Identification, Removing, and Filling Using Polarimetric and Environmental Data in the MRMS Operational System

US Next-Generation Radar (NEXRAD) WSR-88D (Weather Surveillance Radar 88 Doppler) has been upgrade to dual polarization since the end of 2012, and this make it possible to distinguish the non- or contaminated precipitation radar echoes with the polarimetric radar observations. One important variable of WSR-88D radar observations is reflectivity, which right now has been widely utilized to estimate the precipitation amount on the ground surface with reflectivity (Z) and rain-rate (R) relationship. So, the quality of the reflectivity field is very important for generating the accurate radar quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE). However, in the real atmosphere, the NEXRAD WSR-88D radars are running automatically, and the precipitation radar echoes will unpredictably be contaminated or affected by non-meteorological contaminants, such as wind farm, terrain and so on. The current study developed one scheme to identify the contaminated precipitation reflectivity based on the dual-polarimetric observations and wind farm table, and replace it with the non-contaminated precipitation reflectivity from the upper tilt. The results show that the contaminated precipitation reflectivity has been effectively identified, and the hole has been smoothly filled.