Synchronization of Multiple Radar Observations in 3D Radar Mosaic

The 3-D radar reflectivity data has become increasingly important for use in data assimilation towards convective scale numerical weather prediction as well as next generation precipitation estimation. The reflectivity data are typically objectively analyzed onto 3-D Cartesian grid prior to being assimilated into the models. Existing multi-radar mosaic techniques usually perform spatial objective analysis of multiple radar data by assuming all the observations are valid at the same time. The assumption holds well for slow evolving precipitation systems. For fast evolving convective storms, this assumption may be violated and the mosaic of different radar volume scans observed at different time may result in inaccurate storm structure depictions. This study investigates synchronization techniques based on various motion fields (e.g., numerical weather prediction model wind fields or motion fields from a multi-scale storm tracking algorithm) and their impact on the 3D radar mosaic analyses.