Azimuthal and radial shear fields are extracted from single-Doppler radial velocity data using a two-dimensional, local, linear least-squares technique. The presentation shows how these fields are derived as well as how the technique performs in assessing the properties of both simulated and actual radar-sampled vortices. These fields are compared to existing one-dimensional methods of computing azimuthal and radial shears.

We illustrate that this method of calculating the rotational and divergent properties of a radial velocity field has several practical uses. Since radial velocity fields cannot be easily visualized in three-dimensional space, the azimuthal and radial shear derivatives provide meteorologists with a useful tool for viewing velocity-derived fields that are not radar-relative. These derived quantities may also be easily integrated into a multi-radar mosaic field or used by multi-radar, multi-sensor algorithms.