Dan Wolfe, Michael Falls, and Michelle Ryan

A newly developed wind profiler incorporating an electronically steerable phased array antenna and real-time motion compensation has been operating aboard the NOAA Research Vessel Ron Brown since October 2000. Observations from several major eastern Pacific ocean experiments along with daily radiosonde flights has provided the opportunity to quantify the performance of this system under shipboard conditions. These include normal ship motions and ship/electronic clutter, as well as varying atmospheric and ocean conditions.

This paper presents results from profiler and radiosonde comparisons categorized by some of the conditions under which they were obtained. Initial results indicate there is interference in the lower range gates (up to 0.5 km) due to ocean clutter and the ship's super structure. As expected the ability to detect atmospheric signals depends on the meteorological conditions affecting the strength of this signal relative to other non-atmospheric signals.