83rd Annual

Monday, 10 February 2003
Operation of a Mobile Wind Profiler in Severe Clutter Environments
J. R. Jordan, ETL/NOAA, Boulder, CO; and J. L. Leach and D. E. Wolfe
Poster PDF (678.1 kB)
A rapid deployment mobile wind profiler would be useful for many applications. For example, weather forecasts during forest fires and dispersion prediction in case of a toxic substance release. Currently, wind profiler radars must be located at locations with a minimum of clutter contamination to produce accurate winds, especially at lower altitudes required for boundary layer measurements. Rapid deployment profilers must have the capability of measuring accurate horizontal winds in nearly any clutter environment to be useful in real world applications . To operate in severe clutter environments, radars must have a large linear dynamic range, the ability to separate large clutter signals from the desired small atmospheric signals, and be intelligent enough to detect the atmospheric among many other interfering signals. The Environmental Technology Laboratory has developed wind profilers with 105 dB of linear dynamic range and wavelet filtering to reduce clutter contamination. When used in conjunction with an intelligent peak picking algorithm, these developments make a rapid deployment mobile profiler possible. This paper will describe the changes to a standard wind profiler that are necessary to operate in severe clutter conditions.

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